Hearing Higgs with gravitational wave detectors

Abstract

The relic gravitational wave background due to tensor linear perturbations generated during Higgs inflation is computed. Both the Standard Model and a well-motivated phenomenological completion (that accounts for all the experimentally confirmed evidence of new physics) are considered. We focus on critical Higgs inflation, which improves on the non-critical version and features an amplification of the tensor fluctuations. The latter property allows us to establish that future space-borne interferometers, such as DECIGO, BBO and ALIA, may detect the corresponding primordial gravitational waves.