Hidden superconformal symmetry of the cosmological evolution

Journal Article · Wed Jan 01 04:00:00 EST 2014 · Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1088/1475-7516/2014/01/020· OSTI ID:22369820

Kallosh, Renata; Linde, Andrei ^[1]

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1. Department of Physics, Stanford University, Stanford, California, 94305 (United States)

In the superconformal formulation of supergravity, the standard supergravity action appears as a result of spontaneous symmetry breaking when the conformal compensator scalar field, the conformon, acquires a nonzero value, giving rise to the Planck mass. After that, many symmetries of the original theory become well hidden, and therefore they are often ignored. However, recent developments demonstrated that superconformal invariance is more than just a tool: it plays an important role in generalizing previously existing formulations of supergravity and developing new classes of inflationary models. In this paper we describe hidden superconformal symmetry of the cosmological evolution. In this formulation, inflation can be equivalently described as the conformon instability, and creation of the universe 'from nothing' can be interpreted as spontaneous symmetry breaking due to emergence of a classical conformon field. We develop a general formalism that allows to describe the cosmological evolution simultaneously with the evolution of the conformon. We find a set of gauge invariant physical observables, including the superconformally invariant generalizations of the square of the Weyl tensor, which are necessary for invariant description of the cosmological singularities.

• OSTI ID: 22369820
• Journal Information: Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, Journal Name: Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics Journal Issue: 01 Vol. 2014; ISSN 1475-7516
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS
CONFORMAL INVARIANCE
COSMOLOGICAL INFLATION
EVOLUTION
GAUGE INVARIANCE
INSTABILITY
MASS
SCALAR FIELDS
SINGULARITY
SUPERGRAVITY
SYMMETRY BREAKING
UNIVERSE