Higgs condensation as an unwanted curvaton

Abstract

During inflation in the early universe, the Higgs field continuously acquires long-wave quantum fluctuations. They accumulate to yield a non-vanishing value with an exponentially large correlation length. We study consequences of such Higgs condensations to show that, in inflation models where the universe is reheated through gravitational particle production at the transition to the kination regime, they not only contribute to reheat the universe but also act as a curvaton. Unfortunately, however, for parameters of the Standard Model Higgs field, this curvaton produces density fluctuations too large, so the inflation models followed by a long kination regime are ruled out.