https://doi.org/10.1140/epjc/s10052-017-4799-4
Regular Article - Theoretical Physics
Running non-minimal inflation with stabilized inflaton potential
Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa, Alabama, 35487, USA
* e-mail: draut@crimson.ua.edu
Received:
21
January
2017
Accepted:
28
March
2017
Published online:
18
April
2017
In the context of the Higgs model involving gauge and Yukawa interactions with the spontaneous gauge symmetry breaking, we consider 
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 
extension of the standard model with identification of the Higgs field as the inflaton. The stability conditions for the inflaton effective potential fix the mass ratio amongst the gauge boson, the right-handed neutrinos and the inflaton. This mass ratio also correlates with the inflationary predictions. In other words, if the gauge boson and the right-handed neutrinos are discovered in the future, their observed mass ratio provides constraints on the inflationary predictions.
© The Author(s), 2017
