The overshoot problem in inflation after tunneling
- DESY, Notkestrasse 85, 22607 Hamburg (Germany)
We show the absence of the usual parametrically large overshoot problem of small-field inflation if initiated by a Coleman-De Luccia (CDL) tunneling transition from an earlier vacuum in the limit of small inflationary scale compared to the tunneling scale. For low-power monomial exit potentials V(φ) ∼ φ{sup n} , n < 4, we derive an expression for the amount of overshoot. This is bounded from above by the width of the steep barrier traversed after emerging from tunneling and before reaching a slow-roll region of the potential. For n ≥ 4 we show that overshooting is entirely absent. We extend this result through binomials to a general potential written as a series expansion, and to the case of arbitrary finite initial speed of the inflaton. This places the phase space of initial conditions for small-field and large-field inflation on the same footing in a landscape of string theory vacua populated via CDL tunneling.
- OSTI ID:
- 22280177
- Journal Information:
- Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, Vol. 2012, Issue 01; Other Information: Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 1475-7516
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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