Robustness of inflation to kinetic inhomogeneities

Elley, Matthew; Aurrekoetxea, Josu C.; Clough, Katy; Flauger, Raphael; Giannadakis, Panagiotis; Lim, Eugene A.

doi:10.1088/1475-7516/2025/01/050

Title: Robustness of inflation to kinetic inhomogeneities

Journal Article · Fri Jan 10 00:00:00 UTC 2025 · Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1088/1475-7516/2025/01/050 · OSTI ID:3010297

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Univ. of Basque Country (Spain); King's College, London (United Kingdom)
Univ. of Oxford (United Kingdom)
Queen Mary Univ. of London (United Kingdom)
Univ. of California, San Diego, CA (United States)
King's College, London (United Kingdom)

We investigate the effects of large inhomogeneities in both the inflaton field and its momentum. We find that in general, large kinetic perturbations reduce the number of e-folds of inflation. In particular, we observe that inflationary models with sub-Planckian characteristic scales are not robust even to kinetic energy densities that are sub-dominant to the potential energy density, unless the initial field configuration is sufficiently far from the minimum. This strengthens the results of our previous work. In inflationary models with super-Planckian characteristic scales, despite a reduction in the number of e-folds, inflation is robust even when the potential energy density is initially sub-dominant. For the cases we study, the robustness of inflation strongly depends on whether the inflaton field is driven into the reheating phase by the inhomogeneous scalar dynamics.

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Research Organization:: Univ. of California, San Diego, CA (United States)

Sponsoring Organization:: USDOE Office of Science (SC), High Energy Physics (HEP)

Grant/Contract Number:: SC0009919

OSTI ID:: 3010297

Journal Information:: Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, Journal Name: Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics Journal Issue: 01 Vol. 2025; ISSN 1475-7516

Publisher:: Institute of Physics (IOP)Copyright Statement

Country of Publication:: United States

Language:: English

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