Is Higgs Inflation Dead?
  We consider the status of Higgs Inflation in light of the recently announced
detection of B-modes in the polarization of the cosmic microwave background
radiation by the BICEP2 collaboration. In order for the primordial B-mode
signal to be observable by BICEP2, the energy scale of inflation must be high,
$V_{\rm inf} \approx 2 \times 10^{16} \GeV$. Higgs Inflation generally predicts
a small amplitude of tensor perturbations, and therefore it is natural to ask
if Higgs Inflation might accommodate this new measurement. We find the answer
is essentially no, unless one considers either extreme fine tuning, or possibly
adding new beyond the standard model fields, which remove some of the more
attractive features of the original idea. We also explore the possible
importance of a factor that has not previously been explicitly incorporated,
namely the gauge dependence of the effective potential used in calculating
inflationary observables, e.g. $n_S$ and $r$, to see if this might provide
additional wiggle room. Such gauge effects are comparable to effects of Higgs
mass uncertainties and other observables already considered in the analysis,
and therefore they are relevant for constraining models. But, they are
therefore too small to remove the apparent incompatibility between the BICEP2
observation and the predictions of Higgs Inflation.
