2014/12/31 by W. Buchmüller, Wilfried Buchmuller, Koji Ishiwata · 3 citations
Economics, Econometrics and Finance · Physics and Astronomy · #Complex Systems and Time Series Analysis #Computer science #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #Economics #Grand Unified Theory #Inflation (cosmology) #Keynesian economics #Particle physics #Physics #Programming language #Stochastic processes and financial applications #Theoretical physics #Unification #astro-ph.CO #hep-ph #hep-th
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevd.91.081302
published as Phys. Rev. D 91, 081302 (2015) · 5 pages, 3 figures, published version, a few typos are corrected
openalex publication_date 2015/04/07 · arxiv created 2015/04/10 · arxiv updated 2015/04/16 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We consider hybrid inflation for small couplings of the inflaton to matter such that the critical value of the inflaton field exceeds the Planck mass. It has recently been shown that inflation then continues at subcritical inflaton field values where quantum fluctuations generate an effective inflaton mass. The effective inflaton potential interpolates between a quadratic potential at small field values and a plateau at large field values. An analysis of the allowed parameter space leads to predictions for the scalar spectral index ns and the tensor-to-scalar ratio r similar to those of natural inflation. Using the ranges for ns and r favored by the Planck data, we find that the energy scale of the plateau is constrained to the interval (1.6--2.4)\ifmmode×\else\texttimes\fi1016 GeV, which includes the energy scale of gauge coupling unification in the supersymmetric standard model. The tensor-to-scalar ratio is predicted to satisfy the lower bound r>0.049 for 60 e-folds before the end of inflation.