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The detection of an oscillating pattern in the bispectrum of density perturbations could suggest the existence of a high-energy second minimum in the Higgs potential. If the Higgs field resided in this new minimum during inflation and was brought back to the electroweak vacuum by thermal corrections during reheating, the coupling of Standard Model particles to the inflaton would leave its imprint on the bispectrum. We focus on the fermions, whose dispersion relation can be modified by the coupling to the inflaton, leading to an enhanced particle production during inflation even if their mass during inflation is larger than the Hubble scale. This results in a large non-analytic contribution to non-Gaussianities, with an amplitude $f_{rm NL}$ as large as $100$ in the squeezed limit, potentially detectable in future 21-cm surveys. Measuring the contributions from two fermions would allow us to compute the ratio of their masses, and to ascribe the origin of the signal to a new Higgs minimum. Such a discovery would be a tremendous step towards understanding the vacuum instability of the Higgs potential, and could have fascinating implications for anthropic considerations.
We discuss models in which vacua other than our own can be directly observed in the present universe. Models with density-dependent vacuum structure can give rise to `non-lethal-vacua: vacua with lower energy-density than our vacuum, but only in regi
We study the production of massive gauge bosons during inflation from the axion-type coupling to the inflaton and the corresponding oscillatory features in the primordial non-Gaussianity. In a window in which both the gauge boson mass and the chemica
We look for oscillating signals in the primordial bispectrum from new physics heavy particles which are visibly large for next generation large scale structures (LSS) survey. We show that in ordinary inflation scenarios where a slow-rolling inflaton
We study early and late time signatures of both QCD axion strings and hyperlight axion strings (axiverse strings). We focus on charge deposition onto axion strings from electromagnetic fields and subsequent novel neutralizing mechanisms due to bound
The quantum fluctuations of the Higgs field during inflation could be a source of primordial density perturbations through Higgs-dependent inflaton decay. By measuring primordial non-Gaussianities, this so-called Higgs-modulated reheating scenario pr