Inflation and pseudo-Goldstone Higgs boson

Understand

We consider inflation within a model framework where the Higgs boson arises as a pseudo-Goldstone boson associated with the breaking of a global symmetry at a scale significantly larger than the electroweak one.

• We show that in such a model the scalar self-couplings can be parametrically suppressed and, consequently, the non-minimal couplings to gravity can be of order one or less, while the inflationary predictions of the model remain compatible with the precision cosmological observations.
• Furthermore, in the model we study, the existence of the electroweak scale is entirely due to the inflaton field.
• Our model therefore suggests that inflation and low energy particle phenomenology may be more entwined than assumed so far.