Gravitational Waves from Higgs Preheating after Inflaton Z2-Symmetry Breaking
Abstract
In this paper, nonperturbative lattice simulations are used to study Higgs preheating and the associated gravitational wave (GW) background after the inflaton Z2 symmetry is broken during inflation. This symmetry breaking generates both trilinear and quartic inflaton-Higgs interactions during preheating. The quartic inflaton-Higgs coupling is characterized by qϕh≡ λϕh/λϕ, while the trilinear interaction enters jointly through qϕh and qε≡ mϕ/(√(λϕ)ϕ0). The Higgs self-coupling parameter qh≡ λh/λϕ determines the onset of backreaction through the effective mass induced by Higgs self-interactions. Our simulations show that efficient preheating requires both a sufficiently broad resonance band and delayed backreaction. For λϕ=10−13, the viable parameter region is approximately qϕh>10, qh<103, and qε<10−5. Smaller qε keeps the system in a quartic-dominated regime and suppresses the rapid drift of resonance bands, while smaller qh delays the end of preheating by weakening self-interaction-induced backreaction. The amplified Higgs inhomogeneities source GW through the transverse-traceless part of the anisotropic stress tensor. The lattice results show that the GW spectrum grows rapidly during parametric resonance, broadens through rescattering, and saturates in the nonlinear stage. At late times, the spectrum develops a broad peak with amplitude Ωgw∼10−6 at production. After redshifting to the present day, the peak frequency is f∼109 Hz with present-day amplitude Ωgw,0 h2 ∼ 10−10. These results suggest that high-frequency GW from Higgs preheating may be detectable by future resonant-cavity detectors.
Versions
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BibTeX
@misc{zhou2026gravitational,
title = {{Gravitational Waves from Higgs Preheating after Inflaton $Z_2$-Symmetry Breaking}},
author = {Hua Zhou and Qing Yu and Wei Cheng and Ruo-Peng Zhang},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2605.04670},
eprint = {2605.04670},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.04670},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Gravitational Waves from Higgs Preheating after Inflaton Z_2-Symmetry Breaking
AU - Hua Zhou
AU - Qing Yu
AU - Wei Cheng
AU - Ruo-Peng Zhang
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/06
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2605.04670
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2605.04670
AB - In this paper, nonperturbative lattice simulations are used to study Higgs preheating and the associated gravitational wave (GW) background after the inflaton Z_2 symmetry is broken during inflation. This symmetry breaking generates both trilinear and quartic inflaton-Higgs interactions during preheating. The quartic inflaton-Higgs coupling is characterized by q_ϕh≡ λ_ϕh/λ_ϕ, while the trilinear interaction enters jointly through q_ϕh and q_ε≡ m_ϕ/(√(λ_ϕ)ϕ_0). The Higgs self-coupling parameter q_h≡ λ_h/λ_ϕ determines the onset of backreaction through the effective mass induced by Higgs self-interactions. Our simulations show that efficient preheating requires both a sufficiently broad resonance band and delayed backreaction. For λ_ϕ=10^−13, the viable parameter region is approximately q_ϕh>10, q_h<10^3, and q_ε<10^−5. Smaller q_ε keeps the system in a quartic-dominated regime and suppresses the rapid drift of resonance bands, while smaller q_h delays the end of preheating by weakening self-interaction-induced backreaction. The amplified Higgs inhomogeneities source GW through the transverse-traceless part of the anisotropic stress tensor. The lattice results show that the GW spectrum grows rapidly during parametric resonance, broadens through rescattering, and saturates in the nonlinear stage. At late times, the spectrum develops a broad peak with amplitude Ω_gw∼10^−6 at production. After redshifting to the present day, the peak frequency is f∼10^9 Hz with present-day amplitude Ω_gw,0 h^2 ∼ 10^−10. These results suggest that high-frequency GW from Higgs preheating may be detectable by future resonant-cavity detectors.
ER -