The Planck and LHC results and particle physics

I will discuss the recent LHC and Planck results, which are completely compatible with the Standard Model of particle physics, and the standard cosmological model ($\Lambda$CDM), respectively. It turns out that the extension of the Standard Model is, of course, required, but can be very minimal. I will discuss also what future measurements may be important to test this approach.Comment: 7 pages, talk on the EPS-HEP 2013 prepared for conference proceeding

Why should we care about the top quark Yukawa coupling?

In the cosmological context, for the Standard Model to be valid up to the scale of inflation, the top quark Yukawa coupling $y_t$ should not exceed the critical value $y_t^{crit}$, coinciding with good precision (about 0.02%) with the requirement of the stability of the electroweak vacuum. So, the exact measurements of $y_t$ may give an insight on the possible existence and the energy scale of new physics above 100 GeV, which is extremely sensitive to $y_t$. We overview the most recent theoretical computations of $y_t^{crit}$ and the experimental measurements of $y_t$. Within the theoretical and experimental uncertainties in $y_t$ the required scale of new physics varies from $10^7$ GeV to the Planck scale, urging for precise determination of the top quark Yukawa coupling.Comment: 9 pages, 8 figures. The journal version in JETP special issue. Some discussion is improved, references added, and (here we reluctantly followed the editorial request) the abstract is expande

Higgs inflation at the critical point

Higgs inflation can occur if the Standard Model (SM) is a self-consistent effective field theory up to inflationary scale. This leads to a lower bound on the Higgs boson mass, $M_h \geq M_{\text{crit}}$. If $M_h$ is more than a few hundreds of MeV above the critical value, the Higgs inflation predicts the universal values of inflationary indexes, $r\simeq 0.003$ and $n_s\simeq 0.97$, independently on the Standard Model parameters. We show that in the vicinity of the critical point $M_{\text{crit}}$ the inflationary indexes acquire an essential dependence on the mass of the top quark $m_t$ and $M_h$. In particular, the amplitude of the gravitational waves can exceed considerably the universal value.Comment: Improved analysis taking into account one-loop terms in the effective potential. Sign error in the formula for the running of the spectral index corrected. Discussion of the relation between the particle physics and inflationary parameters adde

Model dependence of the bremsstrahlung effects from the superluminal neutrino at OPERA

We revisit the bremsstrahlung process of a superluminal neutrino motivated by OPERA results. From a careful analysis of the plane wave solutions of the superluminal neutrino, we find that the squared matrix elements contain additional terms from Lorentz violation due to the modified spin sum for the neutrino. We point out that the coefficients of the decay rate and the energy loss rate significantly depend on the details of the model, although the results are parametrically similar to the ones obtained by Cohen and Glashow [1]. We illustrate this from the modified neutral current interaction of neutrino with Lorentz violation of the same order as in the modified dispersion relation.Comment: 10 pages, no figures, version to appear as a Rapid Communication in Phys. Rev.

On the robustness of the primordial power spectrum in renormalized Higgs inflation

We study the cosmological consequences of higher-dimensional operators respecting the asymptotic symmetries of the tree-level Higgs inflation action. The main contribution of these operators to the renormalization group enhanced potential is localized in a compact field range, whose upper limit is close to the end of inflation. The spectrum of primordial fluctuations in the so-called universal regime turns out to be almost insensitive to radiative corrections and in excellent agreement with the present cosmological data. However, higher-dimensional operators can play an important role in critical Higgs inflation scenarios containing a quasi-inflection point along the inflationary trajectory. The interplay of radiative corrections with this quasi-inflection point may translate into a sizable modification of the inflationary observables.Comment: 12 pages, 8 figures - matches the published versio

Semiclassical S-matrix for black holes

We propose a semiclassical method to calculate S-matrix elements for two-stage gravitational transitions involving matter collapse into a black hole and evaporation of the latter. The method consistently incorporates back-reaction of the collapsing and emitted quanta on the metric. We illustrate the method in several toy models describing spherical self-gravitating shells in asymptotically flat and AdS space-times. We find that electrically neutral shells reflect via the above collapse-evaporation process with probability exp(-B), where B is the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy of the intermediate black hole. This is consistent with interpretation of exp(B) as the number of black hole states. The same expression for the probability is obtained in the case of charged shells if one takes into account instability of the Cauchy horizon of the intermediate Reissner-Nordstrom black hole. Our semiclassical method opens a new systematic approach to the gravitational S-matrix in the non-perturbative regime.Comment: 41 pages, 13 figures; Introduction rewritten, references added; journal versio

Standard Model Higgs boson mass from inflation

We analyse one-loop radiative corrections to the inflationary potential in the theory, where inflation is driven by the Standard Model Higgs field. We show that inflation is possible provided the Higgs mass m_H lies in the interval m_min<m_H<m_max, where m_min=[136.7+(m_t-171.2)*1.95]GeV, m_max=[184.5+(m_t-171.2)*0.5]GeV and m_t is the mass of the top quark. Moreover, the predictions of the spectral index of scalar fluctuations and of the tensor-to-scalar ratio practically do not depend on the Higgs mass within the admitted region and are equal to n_s=0.97 and r=0.0034 correspondingly.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures. Journal version+misprint fixed and added reference to the two-loop analysis paper for convenienc

Some like it hot: R2R^2 heals Higgs inflation, but does not cool it

Strong coupling in Higgs inflation at high energies hinders a joint description of inflation, reheating and low-energy dynamics. The situation may be improved with a proper UV completion of the model. A well-defined self-consistent way is to introduce an $R^2$-term into the action. In this modified model the strong coupling scale returns back to the Planck scale, which justifies the use of the perturbative methods in studies of the model dynamics after inflation. We investigate the reheating of the post-inflationary Universe, which involves two highly anharmonic oscillators strongly interacting with each other: homogeneous Higgs field and scalaron. We observe that in interesting regions of model parameter space these oscillations make longitudinal components of the weak gauge bosons tachyonic, triggering instant preheating at timescales much shorter than the Hubble time. The weak gauge bosons are heavy and decay promptly into light Standard Model particles, ensuring the onset of the radiation domination era right after inflation.Comment: 18 pages, 6 figures. Minor clarifications, corrected typo in eq. (38) and in Fig. 5 axes label