Electroweak stability and non-minimal coupling

Understand

The measured values of the Higgs and top quark mass indicate that the electroweak vacuum is metastable if there is no new physics below the Planck scale.

• This is at odds with a period of high scale inflation.
• A non-minimal coupling between the Higgs field and the Ricci scalar can stabilize the vacuum as it generates a large effective Higgs mass during inflation.
• We consider the effect of this coupling during preheating, when Higgs modes can be produced very efficiently due to the oscillating Ricci scalar.