Abstract
Future measurements of primordial non-Gaussianity can reveal cosmologically produced particles with masses of order the inflationary Hubble scale and their interactions with the inflaton, giving us crucial insights into the structure of fundamental physics at extremely high energies. We study gauge-Higgs theories that may be accessible in this regime, carefully imposing the constraints of gauge symmetry and its (partial) Higgsing. We distinguish two types of Higgs mechanisms: (i) a standard one in which the Higgs scale is constant before and after inflation, where the particles observable in non-Gaussianities are far heavier than can be accessed by laboratory experiments, perhaps associated with gauge unification, and (ii) a “heavy-lifting” mechanism in which couplings to curvature can result in Higgs scales of order the Hubble scale during inflation while reducing to far lower scales in the current era, where they may now be accessible to collider and other laboratory experiments. In the heavy-lifting option, renormalization-group running of terrestrial measurements yield predictions for cosmological non-Gaussianities. If the heavy-lifted gauge theory suffers a hierarchy problem, such as does the Standard Model, confirming such predictions would demonstrate a striking violation of the Naturalness Principle. While observing gauge-Higgs sectors in non-Gaussianities will be challenging given the constraints of cosmic variance, we show that it may be possible with reasonable precision given favorable couplings to the inflationary dynamics.
Article PDF
Similar content being viewed by others
Explore related subjects
Find the latest articles, discoveries, and news in related topics.Avoid common mistakes on your manuscript.
References
D. Baumann, Inflation, in Physics of the large and the small, proceedings of The Theoretical Advanced Study Institute in Elementary Particle Physics (TASI 09), Boulder, Colorado, U.S.A., 1-26 June 2009, pp. 523-686 (2011) [DOI:10.1142/9789814327183_0010] [arXiv:0907.5424] [INSPIRE].
Planck collaboration, P.A.R. Ade et al., Planck 2015 results. XX. Constraints on inflation, Astron. Astrophys. 594 (2016) A20 [arXiv:1502.02114] [INSPIRE].
Planck collaboration, P.A.R. Ade et al., Planck 2015 results. XVII. Constraints on primordial non-Gaussianity, Astron. Astrophys. 594 (2016) A17 [arXiv:1502.01592] [INSPIRE].
M. Liguori, E. Sefusatti, J.R. Fergusson and E.P.S. Shellard, Primordial non-Gaussianity and Bispectrum Measurements in the Cosmic Microwave Background and Large-Scale Structure, Adv. Astron. 2010 (2010) 980523 [arXiv:1001.4707] [INSPIRE].
N. Bartolo, S. Matarrese and A. Riotto, Non-Gaussianity and the Cosmic Microwave Background Anisotropies, Adv. Astron. 2010 (2010) 157079 [arXiv:1001.3957] [INSPIRE].
M. Alvarez et al., Testing Inflation with Large Scale Structure: Connecting Hopes with Reality, arXiv:1412.4671 [INSPIRE].
A. Loeb and M. Zaldarriaga, Measuring the small-scale power spectrum of cosmic density fluctuations through 21 cm tomography prior to the epoch of structure formation, Phys. Rev. Lett. 92 (2004) 211301 [astro-ph/0312134] [INSPIRE].
J.B. Muñoz, Y. Ali-Ha¨ımoud and M. Kamionkowski, Primordial non-Gaussianity from the bispectrum of 21-cm fluctuations in the dark ages, Phys. Rev. D 92 (2015) 083508 [arXiv:1506.04152] [INSPIRE].
J.M. Maldacena, Non-Gaussian features of primordial fluctuations in single field inflationary models, JHEP 05 (2003) 013 [astro-ph/0210603] [INSPIRE].
V. Acquaviva, N. Bartolo, S. Matarrese and A. Riotto, Second order cosmological perturbations from inflation, Nucl. Phys. B 667 (2003) 119 [astro-ph/0209156] [INSPIRE].
N. Bartolo, E. Komatsu, S. Matarrese and A. Riotto, Non-Gaussianity from inflation: Theory and observations, Phys. Rept. 402 (2004) 103 [astro-ph/0406398] [INSPIRE].
X. Chen, Primordial Non-Gaussianities from Inflation Models, Adv. Astron. 2010 (2010) 638979 [arXiv:1002.1416] [INSPIRE].
D.S. Salopek and J.R. Bond, Nonlinear evolution of long wavelength metric fluctuations in inflationary models, Phys. Rev. D 42 (1990) 3936 [INSPIRE].
E. Komatsu and D.N. Spergel, Acoustic signatures in the primary microwave background bispectrum, Phys. Rev. D 63 (2001) 063002 [astro-ph/0005036] [INSPIRE].
X. Chen and Y. Wang, Large non-Gaussianities with Intermediate Shapes from Quasi-Single Field Inflation, Phys. Rev. D 81 (2010) 063511 [arXiv:0909.0496] [INSPIRE].
X. Chen and Y. Wang, Quasi-Single Field Inflation and Non-Gaussianities, JCAP 04 (2010) 027 [arXiv:0911.3380] [INSPIRE].
D. Baumann and D. Green, Signatures of Supersymmetry from the Early Universe, Phys. Rev. D 85 (2012) 103520 [arXiv:1109.0292] [INSPIRE].
X. Chen and Y. Wang, Quasi-Single Field Inflation with Large Mass, JCAP 09 (2012) 021 [arXiv:1205.0160] [INSPIRE].
V. Assassi, D. Baumann and D. Green, On Soft Limits of Inflationary Correlation Functions, JCAP 11 (2012) 047 [arXiv:1204.4207] [INSPIRE].
T. Noumi, M. Yamaguchi and D. Yokoyama, Effective field theory approach to quasi-single field inflation and effects of heavy fields, JHEP 06 (2013) 051 [arXiv:1211.1624] [INSPIRE].
N. Arkani-Hamed and J. Maldacena, Cosmological Collider Physics, arXiv:1503.08043 [INSPIRE].
E. Dimastrogiovanni, M. Fasiello and M. Kamionkowski, Imprints of Massive Primordial Fields on Large-Scale Structure, JCAP 02 (2016) 017 [arXiv:1504.05993] [INSPIRE].
P. Creminelli, On non-Gaussianities in single-field inflation, JCAP 10 (2003) 003 [astro-ph/0306122] [INSPIRE].
H. Lee, D. Baumann and G.L. Pimentel, Non-Gaussianity as a Particle Detector, JHEP 12 (2016) 040 [arXiv:1607.03735] [INSPIRE].
A. Moradinezhad Dizgah and C. Dvorkin, Scale-Dependent Galaxy Bias from Massive Particles with Spin during Inflation, JCAP 01 (2018) 010 [arXiv:1708.06473] [INSPIRE].
F.L. Bezrukov and M. Shaposhnikov, The Standard Model Higgs boson as the inflaton, Phys. Lett. B 659 (2008) 703 [arXiv:0710.3755] [INSPIRE].
X. Chen, Y. Wang and Z.-Z. Xianyu, Standard Model Background of the Cosmological Collider, Phys. Rev. Lett. 118 (2017) 261302 [arXiv:1610.06597] [INSPIRE].
X. Chen, Y. Wang and Z.-Z. Xianyu, Standard Model Mass Spectrum in Inflationary Universe, JHEP 04 (2017) 058 [arXiv:1612.08122] [INSPIRE].
N. Weiner, Unification without unification, hep-ph/0106097 [INSPIRE].
C. Csáki, G.D. Kribs and J. Terning, 4-D models of Scherk-Schwarz GUT breaking via deconstruction, Phys. Rev. D 65 (2002) 015004 [hep-ph/0107266] [INSPIRE].
J.R. Espinosa, G.F. Giudice and A. Riotto, Cosmological implications of the Higgs mass measurement, JCAP 05 (2008) 002 [arXiv:0710.2484] [INSPIRE].
M. Herranen, T. Markkanen, S. Nurmi and A. Rajantie, Spacetime curvature and the Higgs stability during inflation, Phys. Rev. Lett. 113 (2014) 211102 [arXiv:1407.3141] [INSPIRE].
D. Buttazzo et al., Investigating the near-criticality of the Higgs boson, JHEP 12 (2013) 089 [arXiv:1307.3536] [INSPIRE].
M. Fairbairn and R. Hogan, Electroweak Vacuum Stability in light of BICEP2, Phys. Rev. Lett. 112 (2014) 201801 [arXiv:1403.6786] [INSPIRE].
A. Kobakhidze and A. Spencer-Smith, Electroweak Vacuum (In)Stability in an Inflationary Universe, Phys. Lett. B 722 (2013) 130 [arXiv:1301.2846] [INSPIRE].
J. Kearney, H. Yoo and K.M. Zurek, Is a Higgs Vacuum Instability Fatal for High-Scale Inflation?, Phys. Rev. D 91 (2015) 123537 [arXiv:1503.05193] [INSPIRE].
J.R. Espinosa et al., The cosmological Higgstory of the vacuum instability, JHEP 09 (2015) 174 [arXiv:1505.04825] [INSPIRE].
C.P. Burgess, M. Pospelov and T. ter Veldhuis, The Minimal model of nonbaryonic dark matter: A Singlet scalar, Nucl. Phys. B 619 (2001) 709 [hep-ph/0011335] [INSPIRE].
M. Gonderinger, Y. Li, H. Patel and M.J. Ramsey-Musolf, Vacuum Stability, Perturbativity and Scalar Singlet Dark Matter, JHEP 01 (2010) 053 [arXiv:0910.3167] [INSPIRE].
C. Cheung, M. Papucci and K.M. Zurek, Higgs and Dark Matter Hints of an Oasis in the Desert, JHEP 07 (2012) 105 [arXiv:1203.5106] [INSPIRE].
M. Kadastik, K. Kannike, A. Racioppi and M. Raidal, Implications of the 125 GeV Higgs boson for scalar dark matter and for the CMSSM phenomenology, JHEP 05 (2012) 061 [arXiv:1112.3647] [INSPIRE].
S. Weinberg, Anthropic Bound on the Cosmological Constant, Phys. Rev. Lett. 59 (1987) 2607 [INSPIRE].
V. Agrawal, S.M. Barr, J.F. Donoghue and D. Seckel, The Anthropic principle and the mass scale of the standard model, Phys. Rev. D 57 (1998) 5480 [hep-ph/9707380] [INSPIRE].
N. Craig and D. Green, Testing Split Supersymmetry with Inflation, JHEP 07 (2014) 102 [arXiv:1403.7193] [INSPIRE].
C. Cheung, P. Creminelli, A.L. Fitzpatrick, J. Kaplan and L. Senatore, The Effective Field Theory of Inflation, JHEP 03 (2008) 014 [arXiv:0709.0293] [INSPIRE].
S. Weinberg, Quantum contributions to cosmological correlations, Phys. Rev. D 72 (2005) 043514 [hep-th/0506236] [INSPIRE].
S. Weinberg, Cosmology, Oxford University Press (2008).
S. Weinberg, Effective Field Theory for Inflation, Phys. Rev. D 77 (2008) 123541 [arXiv:0804.4291] [INSPIRE].
D. Wands, K.A. Malik, D.H. Lyth and A.R. Liddle, A New approach to the evolution of cosmological perturbations on large scales, Phys. Rev. D 62 (2000) 043527 [astro-ph/0003278] [INSPIRE].
S. Weinberg, Adiabatic modes in cosmology, Phys. Rev. D 67 (2003) 123504 [astro-ph/0302326] [INSPIRE].
L. Senatore and M. Zaldarriaga, The constancy of ζ in single-clock Inflation at all loops, JHEP 09 (2013) 148 [arXiv:1210.6048] [INSPIRE].
V. Assassi, D. Baumann and D. Green, Symmetries and Loops in Inflation, JHEP 02 (2013) 151 [arXiv:1210.7792] [INSPIRE].
P. Creminelli and M. Zaldarriaga, Single field consistency relation for the 3-point function, JCAP 10 (2004) 006 [astro-ph/0407059] [INSPIRE].
P. Creminelli, G. D’Amico, M. Musso and J. Norena, The (not so) squeezed limit of the primordial 3-point function, JCAP 11 (2011) 038 [arXiv:1106.1462] [INSPIRE].
C.T. Byrnes and K.-Y. Choi, Review of local non-Gaussianity from multi-field inflation, Adv. Astron. 2010 (2010) 724525 [arXiv:1002.3110] [INSPIRE].
C.P. Burgess, L. Leblond, R. Holman and S. Shandera, Super-Hubble de Sitter Fluctuations and the Dynamical RG, JCAP 03 (2010) 033 [arXiv:0912.1608] [INSPIRE].
X. Chen, Y. Wang and Z.-Z. Xianyu, Loop Corrections to Standard Model Fields in Inflation, JHEP 08 (2016) 051 [arXiv:1604.07841] [INSPIRE].
R.M. Wald, General relativity, Chicago University Press (1984).
P. Creminelli, A. Nicolis, L. Senatore, M. Tegmark and M. Zaldarriaga, Limits on non-Gaussianities from wmap data, JCAP 05 (2006) 004 [astro-ph/0509029] [INSPIRE].
D. Babich, P. Creminelli and M. Zaldarriaga, The Shape of non-Gaussianities, JCAP 08 (2004) 009 [astro-ph/0405356] [INSPIRE].
X. Chen, Y. Wang and Z.-Z. Xianyu, Schwinger-Keldysh Diagrammatics for Primordial Perturbations, JCAP 12 (2017) 006 [arXiv:1703.10166] [INSPIRE].
P.D. Meerburg, M. Münchmeyer, J.B. Muñoz and X. Chen, Prospects for Cosmological Collider Physics, JCAP 03 (2017) 050 [arXiv:1610.06559] [INSPIRE].
M. Alishahiha, E. Silverstein and D. Tong, DBI in the sky, Phys. Rev. D 70 (2004) 123505 [hep-th/0404084] [INSPIRE].
X. Chen, M.-x. Huang, S. Kachru and G. Shiu, Observational signatures and non-Gaussianities of general single field inflation, JCAP 01 (2007) 002 [hep-th/0605045] [INSPIRE].
Open Access
This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY 4.0), which permits any use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
ArXiv ePrint: 1711.03988
Rights and permissions
Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made.
The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.
To view a copy of this licence, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
About this article
Cite this article
Kumar, S., Sundrum, R. Heavy-lifting of gauge theories by cosmic inflation. J. High Energ. Phys. 2018, 11 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP05(2018)011
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP05(2018)011