Revisiting Critical Higgs Inflation: Electroweak Couplings, CMB Observables, and Perturbative Unitarity
Abstract
We revisit the scenario of critical Higgs inflation, in which inflation is driven by the Standard Model Higgs boson with parameters chosen close to a critical point, giving rise to an inflection point in its potential. After reviewing this model, we perform a systematic study of its viability centered around three criteria: (1) consistency with electroweak-scale measurements, (2) ability to reproduce the cosmic microwave background (CMB) observables, and (3) sensitivity of the model predictions to unknown UV physics, based on a breakdown of perturbative unitarity. We first show that compliance with electroweak-scale measurements is controlled by the parameters in the Higgs potential at inflationary scales, also updating the literature values. We then demonstrate how for any choice of potential parameters, agreement with the CMB observables can be achieved through the choice of the nonminimal coupling, in both metric and Palatini formulations of gravity. However, we also find that there exist no regions of parameter space, in either the metric or Palatini formulations, in which compliance with all three physical criteria is possible. While this does not exclude the possibility of the Higgs field driving inflation, it means that predictions for any observable are in principle sensitive to the details of the model's UV completion.
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BibTeX
@misc{geller2026revisiting,
title = {{Revisiting Critical Higgs Inflation: Electroweak Couplings, CMB Observables, and Perturbative Unitarity}},
author = {Sarah R. Geller and Sol Gutierrez-Lara and David I. Kaiser and Thomas Steingasser},
howpublished = {arXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2610.17211},
eprint = {2610.17211},
archivePrefix = {arXiv},
url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.17211},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Revisiting Critical Higgs Inflation: Electroweak Couplings, CMB Observables, and Perturbative Unitarity
AU - Sarah R. Geller
AU - Sol Gutierrez-Lara
AU - David I. Kaiser
AU - Thomas Steingasser
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/12
PB - arXiv
DO - 10.48550/arxiv.2610.17211
UR - https://arxiv.org/abs/2610.17211
AB - We revisit the scenario of critical Higgs inflation, in which inflation is driven by the Standard Model Higgs boson with parameters chosen close to a critical point, giving rise to an inflection point in its potential. After reviewing this model, we perform a systematic study of its viability centered around three criteria: (1) consistency with electroweak-scale measurements, (2) ability to reproduce the cosmic microwave background (CMB) observables, and (3) sensitivity of the model predictions to unknown UV physics, based on a breakdown of perturbative unitarity. We first show that compliance with electroweak-scale measurements is controlled by the parameters in the Higgs potential at inflationary scales, also updating the literature values. We then demonstrate how for any choice of potential parameters, agreement with the CMB observables can be achieved through the choice of the nonminimal coupling, in both metric and Palatini formulations of gravity. However, we also find that there exist no regions of parameter space, in either the metric or Palatini formulations, in which compliance with all three physical criteria is possible. While this does not exclude the possibility of the Higgs field driving inflation, it means that predictions for any observable are in principle sensitive to the details of the model's UV completion.
ER -