Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Article number | 019 |
---|---|
<mark>Journal publication date</mark> | 11/2012 |
<mark>Journal</mark> | Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics |
Issue number | 11 |
Volume | 2012 |
Number of pages | 20 |
Publication Status | Published |
<mark>Original language</mark> | English |
Unitarity-violation presents a challenge for non-minimally coupled models of inflation based on weak-scale particle physics. We examine the energy scale of tree-level unitarity-violation in scattering processes for generalized models with multiple scalar fields where the inflaton is either a singlet scalar or the Higgs. In the limit that the non-minimal couplings are all equal (e. g. in the case of Higgs or other complex inflaton), the scale of tree-level unitarity-violation matches the existing result. However if the inflaton is a singlet, and if it has a larger non-minimal coupling than other scalars in the model, then this hierarchy increases the scale of tree-level unitarity-violation. A sufficiently strong hierarchy pushes the scale of tree-level unitarity-violation above the Planck scale. We also discuss models which attempt to resolve the issue of unitarity-violation in Higgs Inflation.