In this paper we point out that Starobinsky inflation could be induced by quantum effects due to a large non-minimal coupling of the Higgs boson to the Ric

An obvious criterion to classify theories of modified gravity is to identify their gravitational degrees of freedom and their coupling to the metric and th

In this short paper we investigate quantum gravitational effects on Einstein’s equations using Effective Field Theory techniques. We consider the lea

In the absence of new physics around \(10^{10}\) GeV, the electroweak vacuum is at best metastable. This represents a major challenge for high scale inflationary models as, during the early rapid expansion of the universe, it seems difficult to understand how the Higgs vacuum would not decay to the true lower vacuum of the theory with catastrophic consequences if inflation took place at a scale above \(10^{10}\) GeV. In this paper we show that the non-minimal coupling of the Higgs boson to curvature could solve this problem by generating a direct coupling of the Higgs boson to the inflationary potential thereby stabilizing the electroweak vacuum. For specific values of the Higgs field initial condition and of its non-minimal coupling, inflation can drive the Higgs field to the electroweak vacuum quickly during inflation.

The Hawking radiation of static, spherically symmetric, asymptotically flat solutions in quadratic gravity is here scrutinized, in the context of the generalized uncertainty principle (GUP). Near-center and near-horizon Frobenius expansions of these solutions are studied. Their Hawking thermal spectrum is investigated out of the tunnelling method and the WKB procedure. Computing the Hawking flux of these black hole solutions shows that, for small black holes and for a precise combination of the GUP parameter and the parameters that govern the gravitational interaction in quadratic gravity, the black hole luminosity can vanish. This yields absolutely stable mini black hole remnants in quadratic gravity.