Brans-Dicke gravity: from Higgs physics to (dynamical) dark energy

Abstract

The Higgs mechanism is one of the central pieces of the Standard Model of electroweak interactions and thanks to it we can generate the masses of the elementary particles. Its fundamental origin is nonetheless unknown. Furthermore, in order to preserve renormalizability we have to break the gauge symmetry spontaneously, what leads to a huge induced cosmological constant incompatible with observations. It turns out that in the context of generalized Brans-Dicke theories of gravity the Higgs potential structure can be motivated from solutions of the field equations which carry harmless cosmological vacuum energy. In addition, the late time cosmic evolution effectively appears like an universe filled with mildly evolving dynamical dark energy mimicking quintessence or phantom dark energy.