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Metastable Electroweak Vacuum: Implications for Inflation

2 Pith papers cite this work. Polarity classification is still indexing.

2 Pith papers citing it
abstract

Within the Standard Model, the current Higgs and top quark data favor metastability of the electroweak vacuum, although the uncertainties are still significant. The true vacuum is many orders of magnitude deeper than ours and the barrier separating the two is tiny compared to the depth of the well. This raises a cosmological question: how did the Higgs field get trapped in the shallow minimum and why did it stay there during inflation? The Higgs initial conditions before inflation must be fine--tuned to about one part in 10^8 in order for the Higgs field to end up in the right vacuum. In this note, we show that these problems can be resolved if there is a small positive coupling between the Higgs and the inflaton.

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2026 1 2025 1

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representative citing papers

Stochastic Gravitational Waves from Modulated Reheating

astro-ph.CO · 2025-10-07 · unverdicted · novelty 5.0

A spectator scalar in modulated reheating with large Higgs-like couplings generates detectable scalar-induced stochastic gravitational waves for BBO and DECIGO, but only outside perturbative low-energy extrapolations.

Constraints on a Light Singlet Scalar from Combined Exotic Higgs Decays

hep-ph · 2026-04-30 · unverdicted · novelty 3.0

Requiring exotic Higgs decays to two or three light singlet scalars not to exceed the SM Higgs width yields cos θ < 0.12-0.13 for m_φ < 40 GeV, with predicted rate limits Γ(h→φφ) < 0.06 MeV and Γ(h→φφφ) < 5×10^{-6} MeV under stronger mixing bounds.

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Showing 2 of 2 citing papers.

  • Stochastic Gravitational Waves from Modulated Reheating astro-ph.CO · 2025-10-07 · unverdicted · none · ref 28 · internal anchor

    A spectator scalar in modulated reheating with large Higgs-like couplings generates detectable scalar-induced stochastic gravitational waves for BBO and DECIGO, but only outside perturbative low-energy extrapolations.

  • Constraints on a Light Singlet Scalar from Combined Exotic Higgs Decays hep-ph · 2026-04-30 · unverdicted · none · ref 37

    Requiring exotic Higgs decays to two or three light singlet scalars not to exceed the SM Higgs width yields cos θ < 0.12-0.13 for m_φ < 40 GeV, with predicted rate limits Γ(h→φφ) < 0.06 MeV and Γ(h→φφφ) < 5×10^{-6} MeV under stronger mixing bounds.