Lattice Calculation of the Decay of Primordial Higgs Condensate

Understand

We study the resonant decay of the primordial Standard Model Higgs condensate after inflation into $SU(2)$ gauge bosons on the lattice.

• We find that the non-Abelian interactions between the gauge bosons quickly extend the momentum distribution towards high values, efficiently destroying the condensate after the onset of backreaction.
• For the inflationary scale $H = 10^8$ GeV, we find that 90% of the Higgs condensate has decayed after $n \sim 10$ oscillation cycles.
• This differs significantly from the Abelian case where, given the same coupling strengths, most of the condensate would persist after the resonance.