Higgs Inflation with Vector-Like Quark Stabilisation and the ACT spectral index

Abstract

Recently, the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) collaboration has reported a scalar spectral index $n_s~=~0.9743~\pm~0.0034$. This is substantially larger than the classical prediction of Higgs Inflation, $n_s \approx 0.965$, which is 2.74$\sigma$ below the ACT mean value. We show that when an otherwise metastable Standard Model Higgs Inflation potential is stabilised by the addition of vector-like quark pairs and the potential is renormalised in the Jordan frame, the value of $n_s$ is generally larger than 0.965 and can explain the ACT observation. As an example, assuming the 2022 PDG direct measurement central value for the t quark mass, $m_{t} = 172.69$ GeV, and central values for the SM inputs to the renormalisation group equations, we obtain $n_s = 0.9792 - 0.9844$ for the case of three isosinglet vector-like B quarks with mass $m_{Q}$ in the range 1-3 TeV, with the lowest value of the $n_s$ range being 1.44$\sigma$ above the ACT mean value. The model predicts primordial gravitational wave with tensor-to-scalar ratio $r = 7.87 \times 10^{-3} - 1.21 \times 10^{-2}$ for $m_{Q} =$ 1-3 TeV, which will be easily observable in forthcoming CMB experiments. Observation of vector-like quarks of mass close to 1 TeV mass combined with a large tensor-to-scalar ratio $r \sim 0.01$ would support the model.