by Dr Adriana Menkara (CAU)

Asia/Seoul
Description

α-attractors are known to be a broad class of inflationary models whose predictions do not change even if one significantly modifies the inflationary potential. These attractor properties ultimately stem from the existence of a non-minimal coupling to gravity in the Jordan frame, that then translates to a pole in the inflaton kinetic term in the Einstein frame. In this talk, I'll introduce a model of the α-attractor type for Higgs inflation. Conventionally, Higgs inflation relies on a large non-minimal coupling to gravity, but taking the conformal limit in the pole inflation set up, we obtain robust and successful inflationary predictions. Most importantly, these Higgs-pole models can be distinguished by their reheating process. Lastly, we briefly comment on the possibility of applying the pole set-up to the Peccei-Quinn field responsible for the QCD axion.