Non-minimal Higgs Inflation, Christian Steinwachs (Nottingham)

We analyze whether the recently discovered Standard Model Higgs boson and the cosmological inflation, responsible for the accelerated expansion of the early universe, can be described by one and the same scalar field -- the Higgs-inflaton. An essential assumption of this model is a large non-minimal coupling of the Higgs-inflation to gravity. By calculating the renormalization group flow from the electroweak vacuum of the Standard Model up to the high energies during inflation, we can connect particle physics and cosmology within one unified model. While the numerical predictions of the model come close to the latest experimental data of the LHC and PLANCK, there still remain some conceptional problems. One of these problems is associated with the choice of the cosmological frame. While the classical theory is independent of this choice, we find by an explicit calculation that already the first quantum corrections induce a frame dependence. We give a geometrical explanation of this frame dependence by embedding it into a more general field theoretical context.