The dark aftermath of Higgs inflation

Understand

In this letter we study the dynamics of the late Universe when a nonminimally coupled Higgs field is present.

• In general, the nonminimal coupling leads to a nontrivial mixing between the gravitational degrees of freedom and the Goldstone massless bosons.
• We know that this is irrelevant during the inflationary phase.
• In contrast, in the late Universe the nonminimal coupling affects the classical equations of motion, leading to an acceleration of the expansion rate or to a collapse that forms Q-balls.