What might things have looked like before the Higgs Field?

[geordief]

Was everything  expanding like there was no tomorrow until the Higgs Field  " condensed" out of whatever there was before it?

And that put a brake  on things?

Is that when spacetime curvature began ?

Was the Higgs Field the last Field to form?

[Mordred]

 Prior to the Higgs field dropping out of thermal equilibrium the universe would certainly have rapid expansion. Simply put all particles are in thermal equilibrium and massless. So their kinetic energy term for momentum certainly overpowered the potential energy terms from any fields present.   Once the Higgs field drops out of thermal equilibrium and particles gain mass this definitely helps slow down the expansion. The slow roll stages of inflation corresponds to this.

However not all particles drop out equilibrium at the same time even though the Higgs field has. They drop out a different times this can also be  seen by the different particle generations of the SM model. For that matter even the Higgs field had stages of how it drops out of equilibrium.

  Every type of particle that drops out of equilibrium affects the expansion rate.

So no Higgs was certainly not the last field to drop out of equilibrium. Any particle type can be treated as a separate field in a multiparticle state. 

Edited May 1 by Mordred