Higgs vacuum (in)stability during inflation: the dangerous relevance of de Sitter departure and Planck-suppressed operators

Understand

The measured Standard Model parameters lie in a range such that the Higgs potential, once extrapolated up to high scales, develops a minimum of negative energy density.

• This has important cosmological implications.
• In particular, during inflation, quantum fluctuations could have pushed the Higgs field beyond its potential barrier, triggering the formation of anti-de Sitter regions, with fatal consequences for our universe.
• By requiring that this did not happen, one can in principle connect (and constrain) Standard Model parameters with the energy scale of inflation.