Electroweak metastability and Higgs inflation

Abstract Extrapolating the Standard Model Higgs potential at high energies, we study the barrier between the electroweak and Planck scale minima. The barrier arises by taking the central values of the relevant experimental inputs, that is the strong coupling constant and the top quark and Higgs masses. We then extend the Standard Model by including a non-minimal coupling to gravity, and explore the phenomenology of the Higgs inflation model. We point out that even configurations that would be metastable in the Standard Model, become viable for inflation if the non-minimal coupling is large enough to flatten the Higgs potential at field values below the barrier; we find that the required value of the non-minimal coupling is smaller than the one needed for the conventional Higgs inflation scenario (which relies on a stable Standard Model Higgs potential, without any barrier); in addition, values of the top mass which are larger than those required in the conventional scenario are allowed.