Electroweak relaxation of cosmological hierarchy

Abstract

A simple model for the late-time cosmic acceleration problem is presented in the Starobinsky inflation with a negative bare cosmological constant as well as a nonminimal coupling to the Higgs boson. After electroweak symmetry breaking, the Starobinsky inflaton has been frozen until very recently, becoming a thawing quintessence, and a comparable magnitude to the observed dark energy density can be achieved without fine-tuning. Our proposal essentially reduces the cosmological constant problem into the electroweak hierarchy problem, and its late-time behaviour is also consistent with the recently proposed swampland criteria.

Comments: v1, 6 pages, two columns, two figures; v2, references added, minor improvement; v3, references added, minor improvement; v4, version accepted by Phys.Rev.D with title changed into "Electroweak relaxation of cosmological hierarchy"; v5, to match the published version with title changed from "Quintessential Starobinsky inflation and swampland criteria "