The Problem with False Vacuum Higgs Inflation
  We investigate the possibility of using the only known fundamental scalar,
the Higgs, as an inflaton with minimal coupling to gravity. The peculiar
appearance of a plateau or a false vacuum in the renormalised effective scalar
potential suggests that the Higgs might drive inflation. For the case of a
false vacuum we use an additional singlet scalar field, motivated by the strong
CP problem, and its coupling to the Higgs to lift the barrier allowing for a
graceful exit from inflation by mimicking hybrid inflation. We find that this
scenario is incompatible with current measurements of the Higgs mass and the
QCD coupling constant and conclude that the Higgs can only be the inflaton in
more complicated scenarios.
