The Standard Model Higgs boson as the inflaton

Abstract

We argue that the Higgs boson of the Standard Model can lead to inflation and produce cosmological perturbations in accordance with observations. An essential requirement is the non-minimal coupling of the Higgs scalar field to gravity; no new particle besides already present in the electroweak theory is required.

Comments: 5 pages, 2 figures. Journal version -- discussion added and typos corrected