Universality class in conformal inflation

By R. Kallosh, Andrei Linde. 2013

774 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We develop a new class of chaotic inflation models with spontaneously broken conformal invariance. Observational consequences of a broad class of such models are stable with respect to strong deformations of the scalar potential. This universality is a critical phenomenon near the point of enhanced symmetry, SO(1,1), in case of conformal inflation. It appears because of the exponential stretching of the moduli space and the resulting exponential flattening of scalar potentials upon switching from the Jordan frame to the Einstein frame in this class of models. This result resembles stretching and flattening of inhomogeneities during inflationary expansion. It has a simple interpretation in terms of velocity versus rapidity near the Kahler cone in the moduli space, similar to the light cone of special theory of relativity. This effect makes inflation possible even in the models with very steep potentials. We describe conformal and superconformal versions of this cosmological attractor mechanism.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Nuclear and High Energy Physics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/1748606b2e30864462a202d8fee88c675e992063

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Astronomy and Astrophysics

In Nuclear and High Energy Physics

Citations in the corpus

Beginning inflation in an inhomogeneous universe (2015, neutral): “describing a family of cosmological attractors [26, 27].”
Universality classes of inflation (2013, background): “Another class of models that was recently proposed on the basis of conformal symmetry arguments are the so-called Tmodels with [4]”
Cosmology with nilpotent superfields (2014, background): “We will discuss here only some basic results following [1–14]; their generalizations to other closely related models studied in the literature is straightforward.”
Minimal Supergravity Models of Inflation (2013, methodology): “This problem was recently resolved in [5, 6], where several different versions of a stable supersymmetric generalization of the theory R + γR2 exactly reproducing the inflaton potential of [15] have been constructed.”
Superconformal inflationary α-attractors (2013, methodology): “In section 3 we review the broad class of α = 1 superconformal models of [1, 2].”
Viscous Cosmology for Early- and Late-Time Universe (2017, background): “which is valid in Starobinsky inflation [45], and it can be satisfied in chaotic inflation [20], in new Higgs inflation [46, 47], and in models of α-attractors [48, 49], too.”
α-attractors: Planck, LHC and dark energy (2015, neutral): “2) where T = 1+Z 1−Z , T −1 = 1−Z 1+Z [7, 10, 14].”
Non-minimal Inflationary Attractors (2013, methodology): “The most surprising result of our recent investigation is the existence of a new universality class of models of chaotic (super)conformal inflation [3].”
Large field inflation and double α-attractors (2014, background): “This distinction is very similar to that between velocity and rapidity in special relativity, as discussed in the context of conformal symmetry gauge-fixing in [16, 17].”
CMB-S4 Science Case, Reference Design, and Project Plan (2019, methodology): “The plateau models divide into those with plateaus near the scalar field origin, for which we include the quartic hilltop (green band) as an example, and those with plateaus away from the origin, for which we include the tanh form (gray band) as an example, as this form arises in a sub-class of α-at”
Inflaton oscillations and post-inflationary reheating (2020, background): “For example, in a class of inflation models based on attractor solutions known as ‘T’ models [27], the potential in the vicinity of the minimum takes the form V ∼ φk, rather than simply V ∼ m2φ2.”
Revisiting non-Gaussianity from non-attractor inflation models (2017, background): “In a realistic case, non-attractor inﬂation can be seen as imposing the ultra-slow-roll initial condition on a plateau-like inﬂaton potential (such as Starobinsky inﬂation [3] and α -attractors [32, 33]).”
The best inflationary models after Planck (2013, background): “[61]: far from the origin, the potential automatically acquires the typical shape found in the present article to be favoured by the Planck data (see in particular right bottom of figure 4).”