Seminars

Higgs-Inflaton Mixing and Signatures at LHC

by Mindaugas Karciauskas (Universidad Complutense de Madrid)

Europe/Vilnius
D401 (NFTMC)

D401

NFTMC

Description

The current data favour metastability of the electroweak (EW) vacuum, which poses a number of cosmological challenges. We suggest a novel solution which does not employ any extra fields beyond the inflaton. We show that the Higgs mixing with an inflaton can lead to a stable EW vacuum. A trilinear Higgs–inflaton coupling always results in such a mixing and it is generally present in realistic models describing the reheating stage correctly. We find that cosmological constraints on this coupling are weak and an order one mixing is possible. In this case, the model is effectively described by a single mass scale of the EW size, making it particularly interesting for direct LHC searches.