Universality classes of inflation

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

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1088/1475-7516/2014/01/007· OSTI ID:22369832

Roest, Diederik ^[1]

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1. Centre for Theoretical Physics, University of Groningen, Nijenborgh 4, 9747 AG Groningen (Netherlands)

We investigate all single-field, slow-roll inflationary models whose slow-roll parameters scale as 1/N in the limit of a large number of e-folds N. We proof that all such models belong to two universality classes, characterised by a single parameter. One class contains small field models like hilltop inflation, while the other class consists of large field models like chaotic inflation. We give the leading expressions for the spectral index and tensor-to-scalar ratio r, which are universal for each class, plus subleading corrections for a number of models. This predicts r either to be unobservably small, r < 0.01, or close to the present observational limit, r ≈ 0.07.

• OSTI ID: 22369832
• Journal Information: Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, Vol. 2014, Issue 01; Other Information: Country of input: International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA); ISSN 1475-7516
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS
GENERAL PHYSICS
79 ASTROPHYSICS
COSMOLOGY AND ASTRONOMY
CHAOS THEORY
CORRECTIONS
SCALARS
TENSORS
COSMOLOGICAL INFLATION