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Phenomenological constraints on Higgs reheating

Yann Cado1, Mathieu Gross2, Yann Mambrini2, and Keith Olive3

Phys. Rev. D 112, 115027 – Published 15 December, 2025

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/2lqf-qcrg

Abstract

In many models of inflation, reheating is realized through a coupling between the inflaton and the Higgs boson. Often, the mass of the inflaton is of order 1013  GeV determined by the amplitude of the scalar fluctuation spectrum. However, in models where the inflaton potential is of the form V∼ϕk about its minimum, the inflaton is massless for k≥4 unless a bare mass term, 12mϕ2ϕ2, is present. In this case, the inflaton mass may be of order the electroweak scale and may be subject to existing collider constraints. In particular, we investigate the constraints on the inflaton mass and reheating temperature Trh arising from the decay of ϕ into H through an interaction term μϕ|H|2. We perform a renormalization group analysis to determine the relative values of μ and mϕ such that the Higgs potential remains stable (and perturbative) at high energy. Taking into account the running of the Higgs quartic self-coupling and the experimental constraints from the LHC via the higgstools public code, we find that 3.4×106  GeV≲Trh≲3.9×1012  GeV with a corresponding constraint on the inflaton bare mass 260  GeV≲mϕ≲3.8×1010  GeV. The dependencies between Trh and the inflaton bare mass mϕ as well as between μ and mϕ are provided.

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