Eur. Phys. J. C (2011) 71: 1821
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-011-1821-0

Regular Article - Theoretical Physics

Higgs portal inflation

¹ DESY Theory Group, Notkestrasse 85, 22607, Hamburg, Germany
² Theory Division, CERN, 1211, Geneva 23, Switzerland

^* e-mail: oleg.lebedev@cern.ch

Received: 29 September 2011
Revised: 14 November 2011
Published online: 1 December 2011

Abstract

The Higgs sector of the Standard Model offers a unique opportunity to probe the hidden sector. The Higgs squared operator is the only dimension two operator which is Lorentz and gauge invariant. It can therefore couple both to scalar curvature and the hidden sector at the dim-4 level. We consider the possibility that a combination of the Higgs and a singlet from the hidden sector plays the role of inflaton, due to their large couplings to gravity. This implies that the quartic couplings satisfy certain constraints which leads to distinct low energy phenomenology, including Higgs signals at the LHC. We also address the unitarity issues and show that our analysis survives the unitarization procedure.