  The Higgs field is an attractive candidate for the inflaton because it is an
observationally confirmed fundamental scalar field. Importantly, it can be
modeled by the most general renormalizable scalar potential. However, if the
classical Higgs potential is used in models of inflation, it is ruled out by
detailed observations of the cosmic microwave background. Here, a new
application of non-adiabatic quantum dynamics to cosmological models is shown
to lead to a multi-field Higgs-like potential, consistent with observations of
a slightly red-tilted power spectrum and a small tensor-to-scalar ratio,
without requiring non-standard ingredients. These methods naturally lead to
novel effects in the beginning of inflation, circumventing common fine-tuning
issues by an application of uncertainty relations to estimate the initial
quantum fluctuations in the early universe. Moreover, inflation ends smoothly
as a consequence of the derived multi-field interactions.
