Is Cosmological Constant Needed in Higgs Inflation?

The detection of B-mode shows a very powerful constraint to theoretical inflation models through the measurement of the tensor-to-scalar ratio $r$. Higgs boson is the most likely candidate of the inflaton field. But usually, Higgs inflation models predict a small value of $r$, which is not quite consistent with the recent results from BICEP2. In this paper, we explored whether a cosmological constant energy component is needed to improve the situation. And we found the answer is yes. For the so-called Higgs chaotic inflation model with a quadratic potential, it predicts $r\approx 0.2$, $n_s\approx0.96$ with e-folds number $N\approx 56$, which is large enough to overcome the problems such as the horizon problem in the Big Bang cosmology. The required energy scale of the cosmological constant is roughly $\Lambda \sim (10^{14} \text{GeV})^2$, which means a mechanism is still needed to solve the fine-tuning problem in the later time evolution of the universe, e.g. by introducing some dark energy component.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figure

Constraints on the Brans-Dicke gravity theory with the Planck data

Based on the new cosmic CMB temperature data from the Planck satellite, the 9 year polarization data from the WMAP, the BAO distance ratio data from the SDSS and 6dF surveys, we place a new constraint on the Brans-Dicke theory. We adopt a parametrization \zeta=\ln(1+1/\omega}), where the general relativity (GR) limit corresponds to $\zeta = 0$. We find no evidence of deviation from general relativity. At 95% probability, $-0.00246 < \zeta < 0.00567$, correspondingly, the region $-407.0 < \omega <175.87$ is excluded. If we restrict ourselves to the $\zeta>0$ (i.e. $\omega >0$) case, then the 95% probability interval is $\zeta 181.65$. We can also translate this result to a constraint on the variation of gravitational constant, and find the variation rate today as $\dot{G}=-1.42^{+2.48}_{-2.27} \times 10^{-13}$yr$^{-1}$ ($1\sigma$ error bar), the integrated change since the epoch of recombination is $\delta G/G = 0.0104^{+0.0186}_{-0.0067}$ ($1\sigma$ error bar). These limits on the variation of gravitational constant are comparable with the precision of solar system experiments.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figures, 2 table

Photoproduction of ηc\eta_c in NRQCD

We present a calculation for the photoproduction of $\eta_c$ under the framework of NRQCD factorization formalism. We find a quite unique feature that the color-singlet contribution to this process vanishes at not only the leading order but also the next to leading order perturbative QCD calculations and that the dominant contribution comes from the color-octet ${}^1S_0^{(8)}$ subprocess. The nonperturbative color-octet matrix element of ${}^1S_0^{(8)}$ of $\eta_c$ is related to that of ${}^3S_1^{(8)}$ of $J/\psi$ by the heavy quark spin symmetry, and the latter can be determined from the direct production of $J/\psi$ at large transverse momentum at the Fermilib Tevatron. We then conclude that the measurement of this process may clarify the existing conflict between the color-octet prediction and the experimental result on the $J/\psi$ photoprodution.Comment: 11 pages, revtex, 4 ps figure