Running non-minimal inflation with stabilized inflaton potential

• Main Authors: Nobuchika Okada, Digesh Raut
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: SpringerOpen 2017-04-01
• Series: European Physical Journal C: Particles and Fields
• Subjects: Yukawa Coupling; Vacuum Expectation Value; Renormalization Group Equation; Quartic Coupling; Higgs Field
• Online Access: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1140/epjc/s10052-017-4799-4

Abstract In the context of the Higgs model involving gauge and Yukawa interactions with the spontaneous gauge symmetry breaking, we consider $$\lambda \phi ^4$$ λ ϕ 4 inflation with non-minimal gravitational coupling, where the Higgs field is identified as the inflaton. Since the inflaton quartic coupling is very small, once quantum corrections through the gauge and Yukawa interactions are taken into account, the inflaton effective potential most likely becomes unstable. In order to avoid this problem, we need to impose stability conditions on the effective inflaton potential, which lead to not only non-trivial relations amongst the particle mass spectrum of the model, but also correlations between the inflationary predictions and the mass spectrum. For concrete discussion, we investigate the minimal $$B-L$$ B - L extension of the standard model with identification of the $$B-L$$ B - L Higgs field as the inflaton. The stability conditions for the inflaton effective potential fix the mass ratio amongst the $$B-L$$ B - L gauge boson, the right-handed neutrinos and the inflaton. This mass ratio also correlates with the inflationary predictions. In other words, if the $$B-L$$ B - L gauge boson and the right-handed neutrinos are discovered in the future, their observed mass ratio provides constraints on the inflationary predictions.