Zygmunt Lalak - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Zygmunt Lalak

arXiv (Cornell University), Jul 18, 2018

Within the framework of the scalar-tensor theory we consider a hill-climbing inflation, in which ... more Within the framework of the scalar-tensor theory we consider a hill-climbing inflation, in which the effective Planck mass increases in time. We obtain the Einstein frame potential with infinitely long and flat plateau as we approach towards the strong coupling regime, together with a runaway vacuum in the GR limit of the theory. The inflation ends with the scalar field rolling down towards infinity, which at the effective level indicates the massless scalar field domination in the Universe. In this scheme we assume that the inflaton is a dark particle, which has no couplings to the Standard Model degrees of freedom (other than the gravitational ones). We discuss the gravitational reheating of the Universe together with its implications on the predictions of the model, including possible amplification of primordial gravitational waves. Our model for the first time realizes explicitly the enhancement of the primordial gravitational waves in the dark inflation scenario.

The Fourteenth Marcel Grossmann Meeting, 2017

We pursued the question of the influence of a strong gravitational field on the structure of the ... more We pursued the question of the influence of a strong gravitational field on the structure of the Higgs effective potential in the gauge-less top-Higgs sector of the Standard Model with an additional scalar singlet. To this end, we calculated the one-loop corrected effective potential in an arbitrary curved spacetime. We have found that the gravity induced terms in the effective potential may influence its behavior in both small and large field regions. This result indicated the necessity of a more careful investigation of the effect of high curvature in the problems concerning the stability of the Higgs effective potential in the full Standard Model.

We discuss the thermal evolution of the spurion and messenger fields of ordinary gauge mediation ... more We discuss the thermal evolution of the spurion and messenger fields of ordinary gauge mediation models taking into account the Standard Model degrees of freedom. It is shown that for thermalized messengers the metastable susy breaking vacuum becomes thermally selected provided that the susy breaking sector is sufficiently weakly coupled to messengers or to any other observable field.

Journal of High Energy Physics, 2020

In this article we investigated the influence of the gravity mediated higher dimensional operator... more In this article we investigated the influence of the gravity mediated higher dimensional operators on the issue of vacuum stability in a model containing two interacting scalar fields. As a framework we used the curved spacetime Effective Field Theory (cEFT) applied to the aforementioned system in which one of the scalars is heavy. After integrating out the heavy scalar we used the standard Euclidean approach to the obtained cEFT. Apart from analyzing the influence of standard operators like the non-minimal coupling to gravity and the dimension six contribution to the scalar field potential, we also investigated the rarely discussed dimension six contribution to the kinetic term and the new gravity mediated contribution to the scalar quartic self-interaction.

Physical Review D, 2021

We study the evolution of cosmological domain walls in models with asymmetric potentials. Our res... more We study the evolution of cosmological domain walls in models with asymmetric potentials. Our research goes beyond the standard case of spontaneous breaking of an approximate symmetry. When the symmetry is explicitly broken the potential exhibits nearly degenerate minima which can lead to creation of a metastable network of domain walls. The time after which the network will decay depends on the difference of values of the potential in minima, its asymmetry around the maximum separating minima and the bias of initial distribution. Using numerical lattice simulations we determine relative importance of these factors on decay time of networks for generic potentials. We find that even very small departures from the symmetric case lead to rapid decay of the domain wall network. As a result creation of a long lasting network capable of producing observable gravitational wave signals is much more difficult than previously thought.

We study gauge mediation in a wide class of O’Raifeartaigh type models where supersymmetry breaki... more We study gauge mediation in a wide class of O’Raifeartaigh type models where supersymmetry breaking metastable vacuum is created by gravity and/or quantum corrections. We examine their thermal evolution in the early universe and the conditions under which the susy breaking vacuum can be selected. It is demonstrated that thermalization typically makes the metastable supersymmetry breaking cosmologically disfavoured but this is not always the case. Initial conditions with the spurion displaced from the symmetric thermal minimum and a small coupling to the messenger sector can result in the realization of the susy breaking vacuum even if the reheating temperature is high. We show that this can be achieved without jeopardizing the low energy phenomenology. In addition, we have found that deforming the models by a supersymmetric mass term for messengers in such a way that the susy breaking minimum and the susy preserving minima are all far away from the origin does not change the conclus...

Proceedings of 18th International Conference From the Planck Scale to the Electroweak Scale — PoS(PLANCK 2015), 2016

Proceedings of 18th International Conference From the Planck Scale to the Electroweak Scale — PoS(PLANCK 2015), 2016

Proceedings of 18th International Conference From the Planck Scale to the Electroweak Scale — PoS(PLANCK 2015), 2016

Physics of the Dark Universe, 2019

Most cosmological models predict that the universe was hot and dense at the early stages of it's ... more Most cosmological models predict that the universe was hot and dense at the early stages of it's evolution. In this paper we analyse the influence of the thermal bath of Standard Model particles on the dynamics of cosmological Higgs domain walls. This manuscript poses an extension of our earlier work in which we investigated the evolution of networks of Higgs domain walls neglecting the impact of temperature variation. Using the thermally corrected effective potential of Standard Model we have found that both the position of the local maximum h max separating minima and the width of domain walls strongly depend on temperature T. For temperatures higher than 10 10 GeV they respectively increase proportionally and decrease inverse proportionally to the increasing temperature. Thus, the energy scale of the problem follows the value of temperature. Our numerical lattice simulations based on the PRS algorithm reveal that Higgs domain walls in the presence of the background thermal bath are highly unstable and decay shortly after formation. Moreover we have found that the fraction of horizons produced by inflation in which Higgs field expectation value is higher then h max needs to be very low in order for the evolution of the network of the domain walls to end in the electroweak vacuum. This means that Higgs domain walls necessarily were very rare objects and their average energy density was very small. As a result, the domain walls can not significantly effect cosmological observables.

Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, 2018

Our main interest is the evolution of domain walls of the Higgs field in the early Universe. The ... more Our main interest is the evolution of domain walls of the Higgs field in the early Universe. The aim of this paper is to understand how dynamics of Higgs domain walls could be influenced by yet unknown interactions from beyond the Standard Model. We assume that the Standard Model is valid up to certain, high, energy scale Λ and use the framework of the effective field theory to describe physics below that scale. Performing numerical simulations with different values of the scale Λ we are able to extend our previous analysis [1] and determine its range of validity. We study domain walls interpolating between the physical electroweak vacuum and the vacuum appearing at very high field strengths. These domain walls could be formed from non-homogeneous configurations of the Higgs field produced by quantum fluctuations during inflation or thermal fluctuations during reheating. Our numerical simulations show that evolution of Higgs domain walls is rather insensitive to interactions beyond the Standard Model as long as masses of new particles are grater than 10 12 GeV. For lower values of Λ the RG improved effective potential is strongly modified at field strengths crucial to the evolution of domain walls. For instance its minima become degenerate for Λ around 10 11 GeV. We find that even in the case when the minima of the potential are nearly degenerate Higgs domain walls decayed shortly after their formation for generic initial conditions. On the other hand, in simulations with specifically chosen initial conditions Higgs domain walls can live longer and enter the scaling regime. We also determine the energy spectrum of gravitational waves produced by decaying domain walls of the Higgs field. For generic initial field configurations the amplitude of the signal is too small to be observed in present and planned detectors.

Proceedings of Corfu Summer Institute 2016 "School and Workshops on Elementary Particle Physics and Gravity" — PoS(CORFU2016), 2017

We investigate the properties of vacuum decay taking into account a non-minimal coupling to gravi... more We investigate the properties of vacuum decay taking into account a non-minimal coupling to gravity. We extend the standard thin-wall solution to include the non-minimal coupling and verify its validity by comparison with a full numerical study. We also investigate the implications of a large cosmological constant whose influence on the geometry boosts the tunneling rate. Our analysis shows that the influence of the non-minimal coupling differs significantly between the cases of Minkowski and deSitter backgrounds. ADP-17-2/T1008

Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, 2018

Reheating after inflation can proceed even if the inflaton couples to Standard Model (SM) particl... more Reheating after inflation can proceed even if the inflaton couples to Standard Model (SM) particles only gravitationally. However, particle production during the transition between de-Sitter expansion and a decelerating Universe is rather inefficient and the necessity to recover the visible Universe leads to a non-standard cosmological evolution initially dominated by remnants of the inflaton field. We remain agnostic to the specific dynamics of the inflaton field and discuss a generic scenario in which its remnants behave as a perfect fluid with a general barotropic parameter w. Using CMB and BBN constraints we derive the allowed range of inflationary scales. We also show that this scenario results in a characteristic primordial Gravitational Wave (GW) spectrum which gives hope for observation in upcoming runs of LIGO as well as in other planned experiments.

Journal of Physics: Conference Series, 2017

We study domain walls interpolating between the physical electroweak vacuum and the global minimu... more We study domain walls interpolating between the physical electroweak vacuum and the global minimum of the Standard Model scalar potential appearing at very high field strengths. Such domain walls could be created in the early Universe under the assumption of validity of the Standard Model up to very high energy scales. The creation of the network of domain walls which ends up in the electroweak vacuum percolating through the Universe is not as difficult to obtain as one may expect, although it requires certain tuning of initial conditions. Our numerical simulations confirm that such domain walls would swiftly decay. Moreover we have found that for the standard cosmology the energy density of gravitational waves emitted from domain walls is too small to be observed in present and planned detectors.

Physical Review D, 2017

In this paper we investigate the role of additional light fields not directly coupled to the back... more In this paper we investigate the role of additional light fields not directly coupled to the background during preheating. We extend our previous study that proved that the production of particles associated with such fields can be abundant due to quantum corrections, even for the massless states. We also obtain the expression for the occupation number operator in terms of interacting fields which includes the non-linear effects important for non-perturbative particle production. We show that adding too many light degrees of freedom without direct interactions with the background might attenuate or even quench preheating as the result of back-reaction effects and quantum corrections.

Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, 2017

In this paper we investigate the induced inflation with two flat regions: one Starobinsky-like pl... more In this paper we investigate the induced inflation with two flat regions: one Starobinsky-like plateau in big field regime and one shorter plateau around the saddle point of the Einstein frame potential. This multi-phase inflationary scenario can be used to solve the problem of classical cosmology. The inflation at the saddle-point plateau is consistent with the data and can have arbitrarily low scale. The results can be useful in the context of the Higgs-Axion relaxation and in a certain limit they are equivalent to the α-attractors.

Physics of the Dark Universe, 2017

The problem of explaining both inflationary and dark matter physics in the framework of a minimal... more The problem of explaining both inflationary and dark matter physics in the framework of a minimal extension of the Standard Model was investigated. To this end, the Standard Model completed by a real scalar singlet playing a role of the dark matter candidate has been considered. We assumed both the dark matter field and the Higgs doublet to be nonminimally coupled to gravity. Using quantum field theory in curved spacetime we derived an effective action for the inflationary period and analyzed its consequences. In this approach, after integrating out both dark matter and Standard Model sectors we obtained the effective action expressed purely in terms of the gravitational field. We paid special attention to determination, by explicit calculations, of the form of coefficients controlling the higher-order in curvature gravitational terms. Their connection to the Standard Model coupling constants has been discussed.

Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, 2016

We study domain walls which can be created in the Standard Model under the assumption that it is ... more We study domain walls which can be created in the Standard Model under the assumption that it is valid up to very high energy scales. We focus on domain walls interpolating between the physical electroweak vacuum and the global minimum appearing at very high field strengths. The creation of the network which ends up in the electroweak vacuum percolating through the Universe is not as difficult to obtain as one may expect, although it requires certain tuning of initial conditions. Our numerical simulations confirm that such domain walls would swiftly decay and thus cannot dominate the Universe. We discuss the possibility of detection of gravitational waves produced in this scenario. We have found that for the standard cosmology the energy density of these gravitational waves is too small to be observed in present and planned detectors.

Journal of High Energy Physics, 2016

We consider vacuum decay in the presence of a non-minimal coupling to gravity. We extend the usua... more We consider vacuum decay in the presence of a non-minimal coupling to gravity. We extend the usual thin-wall solution to include the non-minimal coupling. We also perform a full numerical study and discuss the validity of the new thin-wall approximation. Implications of a large cosmological constant, whose influence on the geometry boosts the tunneling rate, are discussed. Our results show that the influence of the non-minimal coupling differs significantly between the cases of Minkowski and de Sitter backgrounds. In the latter the decay probability quickly decreases when the coupling grows and in fact the vacuum can be made absolutely stable simply due to introduction of the non-minimal coupling. In the case of Minkowski background the effect is much weaker and the decay rate even increases for small values of the non-minimal coupling.

Physical Review D, 2016

We explore two saddle point inflationary scenarios in the context of higher order corrections rel... more We explore two saddle point inflationary scenarios in the context of higher order corrections related to different generalisations of general relativity. Firstly, we deal with Jordan frame Starobinsky potential, for which we identify a portion of a parameter space of inflection point inflation, which can accommodate all the experimental results. Secondly, we analyse Higgs inflation and more specifically the influence of non-renormalisible terms on the standard quartic potential. All results were verified with the PLANCK 2015 data.

arXiv (Cornell University), Jul 18, 2018

Within the framework of the scalar-tensor theory we consider a hill-climbing inflation, in which ... more Within the framework of the scalar-tensor theory we consider a hill-climbing inflation, in which the effective Planck mass increases in time. We obtain the Einstein frame potential with infinitely long and flat plateau as we approach towards the strong coupling regime, together with a runaway vacuum in the GR limit of the theory. The inflation ends with the scalar field rolling down towards infinity, which at the effective level indicates the massless scalar field domination in the Universe. In this scheme we assume that the inflaton is a dark particle, which has no couplings to the Standard Model degrees of freedom (other than the gravitational ones). We discuss the gravitational reheating of the Universe together with its implications on the predictions of the model, including possible amplification of primordial gravitational waves. Our model for the first time realizes explicitly the enhancement of the primordial gravitational waves in the dark inflation scenario.

The Fourteenth Marcel Grossmann Meeting, 2017

We pursued the question of the influence of a strong gravitational field on the structure of the ... more We pursued the question of the influence of a strong gravitational field on the structure of the Higgs effective potential in the gauge-less top-Higgs sector of the Standard Model with an additional scalar singlet. To this end, we calculated the one-loop corrected effective potential in an arbitrary curved spacetime. We have found that the gravity induced terms in the effective potential may influence its behavior in both small and large field regions. This result indicated the necessity of a more careful investigation of the effect of high curvature in the problems concerning the stability of the Higgs effective potential in the full Standard Model.

We discuss the thermal evolution of the spurion and messenger fields of ordinary gauge mediation ... more We discuss the thermal evolution of the spurion and messenger fields of ordinary gauge mediation models taking into account the Standard Model degrees of freedom. It is shown that for thermalized messengers the metastable susy breaking vacuum becomes thermally selected provided that the susy breaking sector is sufficiently weakly coupled to messengers or to any other observable field.

Journal of High Energy Physics, 2020

In this article we investigated the influence of the gravity mediated higher dimensional operator... more In this article we investigated the influence of the gravity mediated higher dimensional operators on the issue of vacuum stability in a model containing two interacting scalar fields. As a framework we used the curved spacetime Effective Field Theory (cEFT) applied to the aforementioned system in which one of the scalars is heavy. After integrating out the heavy scalar we used the standard Euclidean approach to the obtained cEFT. Apart from analyzing the influence of standard operators like the non-minimal coupling to gravity and the dimension six contribution to the scalar field potential, we also investigated the rarely discussed dimension six contribution to the kinetic term and the new gravity mediated contribution to the scalar quartic self-interaction.

Physical Review D, 2021

We study the evolution of cosmological domain walls in models with asymmetric potentials. Our res... more We study the evolution of cosmological domain walls in models with asymmetric potentials. Our research goes beyond the standard case of spontaneous breaking of an approximate symmetry. When the symmetry is explicitly broken the potential exhibits nearly degenerate minima which can lead to creation of a metastable network of domain walls. The time after which the network will decay depends on the difference of values of the potential in minima, its asymmetry around the maximum separating minima and the bias of initial distribution. Using numerical lattice simulations we determine relative importance of these factors on decay time of networks for generic potentials. We find that even very small departures from the symmetric case lead to rapid decay of the domain wall network. As a result creation of a long lasting network capable of producing observable gravitational wave signals is much more difficult than previously thought.

We study gauge mediation in a wide class of O’Raifeartaigh type models where supersymmetry breaki... more We study gauge mediation in a wide class of O’Raifeartaigh type models where supersymmetry breaking metastable vacuum is created by gravity and/or quantum corrections. We examine their thermal evolution in the early universe and the conditions under which the susy breaking vacuum can be selected. It is demonstrated that thermalization typically makes the metastable supersymmetry breaking cosmologically disfavoured but this is not always the case. Initial conditions with the spurion displaced from the symmetric thermal minimum and a small coupling to the messenger sector can result in the realization of the susy breaking vacuum even if the reheating temperature is high. We show that this can be achieved without jeopardizing the low energy phenomenology. In addition, we have found that deforming the models by a supersymmetric mass term for messengers in such a way that the susy breaking minimum and the susy preserving minima are all far away from the origin does not change the conclus...

Proceedings of 18th International Conference From the Planck Scale to the Electroweak Scale — PoS(PLANCK 2015), 2016

Proceedings of 18th International Conference From the Planck Scale to the Electroweak Scale — PoS(PLANCK 2015), 2016

Proceedings of 18th International Conference From the Planck Scale to the Electroweak Scale — PoS(PLANCK 2015), 2016

Physics of the Dark Universe, 2019

Most cosmological models predict that the universe was hot and dense at the early stages of it's ... more Most cosmological models predict that the universe was hot and dense at the early stages of it's evolution. In this paper we analyse the influence of the thermal bath of Standard Model particles on the dynamics of cosmological Higgs domain walls. This manuscript poses an extension of our earlier work in which we investigated the evolution of networks of Higgs domain walls neglecting the impact of temperature variation. Using the thermally corrected effective potential of Standard Model we have found that both the position of the local maximum h max separating minima and the width of domain walls strongly depend on temperature T. For temperatures higher than 10 10 GeV they respectively increase proportionally and decrease inverse proportionally to the increasing temperature. Thus, the energy scale of the problem follows the value of temperature. Our numerical lattice simulations based on the PRS algorithm reveal that Higgs domain walls in the presence of the background thermal bath are highly unstable and decay shortly after formation. Moreover we have found that the fraction of horizons produced by inflation in which Higgs field expectation value is higher then h max needs to be very low in order for the evolution of the network of the domain walls to end in the electroweak vacuum. This means that Higgs domain walls necessarily were very rare objects and their average energy density was very small. As a result, the domain walls can not significantly effect cosmological observables.

Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, 2018

Our main interest is the evolution of domain walls of the Higgs field in the early Universe. The ... more Our main interest is the evolution of domain walls of the Higgs field in the early Universe. The aim of this paper is to understand how dynamics of Higgs domain walls could be influenced by yet unknown interactions from beyond the Standard Model. We assume that the Standard Model is valid up to certain, high, energy scale Λ and use the framework of the effective field theory to describe physics below that scale. Performing numerical simulations with different values of the scale Λ we are able to extend our previous analysis [1] and determine its range of validity. We study domain walls interpolating between the physical electroweak vacuum and the vacuum appearing at very high field strengths. These domain walls could be formed from non-homogeneous configurations of the Higgs field produced by quantum fluctuations during inflation or thermal fluctuations during reheating. Our numerical simulations show that evolution of Higgs domain walls is rather insensitive to interactions beyond the Standard Model as long as masses of new particles are grater than 10 12 GeV. For lower values of Λ the RG improved effective potential is strongly modified at field strengths crucial to the evolution of domain walls. For instance its minima become degenerate for Λ around 10 11 GeV. We find that even in the case when the minima of the potential are nearly degenerate Higgs domain walls decayed shortly after their formation for generic initial conditions. On the other hand, in simulations with specifically chosen initial conditions Higgs domain walls can live longer and enter the scaling regime. We also determine the energy spectrum of gravitational waves produced by decaying domain walls of the Higgs field. For generic initial field configurations the amplitude of the signal is too small to be observed in present and planned detectors.

Proceedings of Corfu Summer Institute 2016 "School and Workshops on Elementary Particle Physics and Gravity" — PoS(CORFU2016), 2017

We investigate the properties of vacuum decay taking into account a non-minimal coupling to gravi... more We investigate the properties of vacuum decay taking into account a non-minimal coupling to gravity. We extend the standard thin-wall solution to include the non-minimal coupling and verify its validity by comparison with a full numerical study. We also investigate the implications of a large cosmological constant whose influence on the geometry boosts the tunneling rate. Our analysis shows that the influence of the non-minimal coupling differs significantly between the cases of Minkowski and deSitter backgrounds. ADP-17-2/T1008

Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, 2018

Reheating after inflation can proceed even if the inflaton couples to Standard Model (SM) particl... more Reheating after inflation can proceed even if the inflaton couples to Standard Model (SM) particles only gravitationally. However, particle production during the transition between de-Sitter expansion and a decelerating Universe is rather inefficient and the necessity to recover the visible Universe leads to a non-standard cosmological evolution initially dominated by remnants of the inflaton field. We remain agnostic to the specific dynamics of the inflaton field and discuss a generic scenario in which its remnants behave as a perfect fluid with a general barotropic parameter w. Using CMB and BBN constraints we derive the allowed range of inflationary scales. We also show that this scenario results in a characteristic primordial Gravitational Wave (GW) spectrum which gives hope for observation in upcoming runs of LIGO as well as in other planned experiments.

Journal of Physics: Conference Series, 2017

We study domain walls interpolating between the physical electroweak vacuum and the global minimu... more We study domain walls interpolating between the physical electroweak vacuum and the global minimum of the Standard Model scalar potential appearing at very high field strengths. Such domain walls could be created in the early Universe under the assumption of validity of the Standard Model up to very high energy scales. The creation of the network of domain walls which ends up in the electroweak vacuum percolating through the Universe is not as difficult to obtain as one may expect, although it requires certain tuning of initial conditions. Our numerical simulations confirm that such domain walls would swiftly decay. Moreover we have found that for the standard cosmology the energy density of gravitational waves emitted from domain walls is too small to be observed in present and planned detectors.

Physical Review D, 2017

In this paper we investigate the role of additional light fields not directly coupled to the back... more In this paper we investigate the role of additional light fields not directly coupled to the background during preheating. We extend our previous study that proved that the production of particles associated with such fields can be abundant due to quantum corrections, even for the massless states. We also obtain the expression for the occupation number operator in terms of interacting fields which includes the non-linear effects important for non-perturbative particle production. We show that adding too many light degrees of freedom without direct interactions with the background might attenuate or even quench preheating as the result of back-reaction effects and quantum corrections.

Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, 2017

In this paper we investigate the induced inflation with two flat regions: one Starobinsky-like pl... more In this paper we investigate the induced inflation with two flat regions: one Starobinsky-like plateau in big field regime and one shorter plateau around the saddle point of the Einstein frame potential. This multi-phase inflationary scenario can be used to solve the problem of classical cosmology. The inflation at the saddle-point plateau is consistent with the data and can have arbitrarily low scale. The results can be useful in the context of the Higgs-Axion relaxation and in a certain limit they are equivalent to the α-attractors.

Physics of the Dark Universe, 2017

The problem of explaining both inflationary and dark matter physics in the framework of a minimal... more The problem of explaining both inflationary and dark matter physics in the framework of a minimal extension of the Standard Model was investigated. To this end, the Standard Model completed by a real scalar singlet playing a role of the dark matter candidate has been considered. We assumed both the dark matter field and the Higgs doublet to be nonminimally coupled to gravity. Using quantum field theory in curved spacetime we derived an effective action for the inflationary period and analyzed its consequences. In this approach, after integrating out both dark matter and Standard Model sectors we obtained the effective action expressed purely in terms of the gravitational field. We paid special attention to determination, by explicit calculations, of the form of coefficients controlling the higher-order in curvature gravitational terms. Their connection to the Standard Model coupling constants has been discussed.

Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, 2016

We study domain walls which can be created in the Standard Model under the assumption that it is ... more We study domain walls which can be created in the Standard Model under the assumption that it is valid up to very high energy scales. We focus on domain walls interpolating between the physical electroweak vacuum and the global minimum appearing at very high field strengths. The creation of the network which ends up in the electroweak vacuum percolating through the Universe is not as difficult to obtain as one may expect, although it requires certain tuning of initial conditions. Our numerical simulations confirm that such domain walls would swiftly decay and thus cannot dominate the Universe. We discuss the possibility of detection of gravitational waves produced in this scenario. We have found that for the standard cosmology the energy density of these gravitational waves is too small to be observed in present and planned detectors.

Journal of High Energy Physics, 2016

We consider vacuum decay in the presence of a non-minimal coupling to gravity. We extend the usua... more We consider vacuum decay in the presence of a non-minimal coupling to gravity. We extend the usual thin-wall solution to include the non-minimal coupling. We also perform a full numerical study and discuss the validity of the new thin-wall approximation. Implications of a large cosmological constant, whose influence on the geometry boosts the tunneling rate, are discussed. Our results show that the influence of the non-minimal coupling differs significantly between the cases of Minkowski and de Sitter backgrounds. In the latter the decay probability quickly decreases when the coupling grows and in fact the vacuum can be made absolutely stable simply due to introduction of the non-minimal coupling. In the case of Minkowski background the effect is much weaker and the decay rate even increases for small values of the non-minimal coupling.

Physical Review D, 2016

We explore two saddle point inflationary scenarios in the context of higher order corrections rel... more We explore two saddle point inflationary scenarios in the context of higher order corrections related to different generalisations of general relativity. Firstly, we deal with Jordan frame Starobinsky potential, for which we identify a portion of a parameter space of inflection point inflation, which can accommodate all the experimental results. Secondly, we analyse Higgs inflation and more specifically the influence of non-renormalisible terms on the standard quartic potential. All results were verified with the PLANCK 2015 data.