Title: A Cosmological Higgs Collider

Speaker: Dr. Shiyun Lu (University of Science and Technology of China)

Time: 14:00pm, August 17, 2023

Location: 3-302, PMO Xianlin Campus

Abstract: The quantum fluctuations of the Higgs field during inflation could be a source of primordial density perturbations through Higgs-dependent inflaton decay. By measuring primordial non-Gaussianities, this so-called Higgs-modulated reheating scenario provides us a unique chance to probe Higgs interactions at extremely high energy scale, which we call the Cosmological Higgs Collider (CHC). We realize CHC in a simple scenario where the inflaton decays into Higgs-portal scalars, taking account of the decay of the Higgs fluctuation amplitude after inflation. We also calculate the CHC signals of Standard Model particles, namely their imprints in the squeezed bispectrum, which can be naturally large. The concept of CHC can be straightforwardly generalized to cosmological isocurvature colliders with other types of isocurvature perturbations.