Theoretical analysis reveals uncanceled vacuum energy alters expansion dynamics in the early universe, indicating light Higgs bosons could induce nonadiabatic cosmic expansion.
Gauge theories for weak interactions which employ the Higgs mechanism for spontaneous symmetry breakdown imply that there should exist a large vacuum energy associated with the Higgs scalar field condensate. A cosmological term in Einstein's field equations can be arranged to remove the unobserved gravitational effect of this vacuum energy in the present universe. However, in the early universe, the spontaneously broken symmetry should have been restored, leaving the cosmological term uncanceled. This paper investigates the conditions necessary for the uncanceled cosmological term to be dynamically important in the early universe. It is found that if certain mass relations are satisfied (in particular if the physical Higgs boson is significantly lighter than the gauge boson), then for a brief period, the expansion rate of the universe will be determined by the uncanceled cosmological term prior to symmetry breaking. For example, in the Weinberg-Salam model, if the mass of the physical Higgs boson is less than 11 GeV, the universe would have undergone a period of nonadiabatic expansion prior to the temperature at which the symmetry is broken.
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Kolb et al. (1980) studied this question.
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