Non-minimal Higgs Inflation and Frame Dependence in Cosmology

Understand

We investigate a very general class of cosmological models with scalar fields non-minimally coupled to gravity.

• A particular representative in this class is given by the non-minimal Higgs inflation model in which the Standard Model Higgs boson and the inflaton are described by one and the same scalar particle.
• While the predictions of the non-minimal Higgs inflation scenario come numerically remarkably close to the recently discovered mass of the Higgs boson, there remains a conceptual problem in this model that is associated with the choice of the cosmological frame.
• While the classical theory is independent of this choice, we find by an explicit calculation that already the first quantum corrections induce a frame dependence.