Dynamics of Electroweak Gauge Fields during and after Higgs Inflation

Understand

We study the dynamics of $SU(2)_L$ times $U(1)_Y$ electroweak gauge fields during and after Higgs inflation.

• In particular, we investigate configurations of the gauge fields during inflation and find the gauge fields remain topologically non-trivial.
• We also find that the gauge fields grow due to parametric resonances caused by oscillations of a Higgs field after inflation.
• We show that the Chern-Simons number also grows significantly.