Higgscitement: cosmological dynamics of fine-tuning

Speaker: JiJi Fan, Brown University

When: September 12, 2018 (Wed), 01:00PM to 02:00PM (add to my calendar)
Location: PRB 595

This event is part of the HET Seminar Series.

The Higgs potential appears to be fine-tuned, hence very sensitive to values of other scalar fields that couple to the Higgs. I will show that this feature can lead to a new epoch in the early universe featuring violent dynamics coupling the Higgs to a scalar modulus. The oscillating modulus drives tachyonic Higgs particle production. We find a simple parametric understanding of when this process can lead to rapid modulus fragmentation, resulting in gravitational wave production. A nontrivial equation-of-state arising from the nonlinear dynamics also affects the time elapsed from inflation to the CMB, influencing fits of inflationary models. Supersymmetric theories automatically contain useful ingredients for this picture.