Non-Minimal Coupling of the Higgs Boson to Curvature in an Inflationary
  Universe
  In the absence of new physics around $10^{10}$ GeV, the electroweak vacuum is
at best metastable. This represents a major challenge for high scale
inflationary models as, during the early rapid expansion of the universe, it
seems difficult to understand how the Higgs vacuum would not decay to the true
lower vacuum of the theory with catastrophic consequences if inflation took
place at a scale above $10^{10}$ GeV. In this paper we show that the
non-minimal coupling of the Higgs boson to curvature could solve this problem
by generating a direct coupling of the Higgs boson to the inflationary
potential thereby stabilizing the electroweak vacuum. For specific values of
the Higgs field initial condition and of its non-minimal coupling, inflation
can drive the Higgs field to the electroweak vacuum quickly during inflation.
