The inflaton as an MSSM Higgs and open string modulus monodromy inflation

It has been recently pointed out that high scale inflation, as recently hinted by the BICEP2 results, is consistent with the identification of an inflaton mass m(I) similar or equal to 10(13) GeV with the SUSY breaking scale in an MSSM with a fine-tuned SM Higgs. This identification leads to a Higgs mass m(h) similar or equal to 126 GeV, consistent with LHC measurements. Here we propose that this naturally suggests to identify the inflaton with the heavy MSSM Higgs system. The fact that the extrapolated Higgs coupling lambda(SM) similar or equal to 0 at scales below the Planck scale suggests the Higgs degrees of freedom could be associated witha Wilson line or D-brane position modulus in string theory. The Higgs system then has a shift symmetry and an N = 2 structure which guarantees that its potential has an approximate quadratic chaotic inflation form. These moduli in string compactifications, being compact, allow for trans-Planckian inflaton field range analogous to a version of monodromy inflation. (C) 2014 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license