2013/07/31 by Renata Kallosh, Andrei Linde · 3 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #astro-ph.CO #gr-qc #hep-ph #hep-th
paper · pdf · doi:10.1088/1475-7516/2013/10/033
13 pages, 6 figures; references added
arxiv created 2013/09/08 · arxiv updated 2015/06/16
Recently we identified a new class of (super)conformally invariant theories which allow inflation even if the scalar potential is very steep in terms of the original conformal variables. Observational predictions of a broad class of such theories are nearly model-independent. In this paper we consider generalized versions of these models where the inflaton has a non-minimal coupling to gravity with ξ<0 different from its conformal value ξ= -1/6. We show that these models exhibit attractor behavior. With even a slight increase of |ξ| from |ξ| = 0, predictions of these models for ns and r rapidly converge to their universal model-independent values corresponding to conformal coupling ξ= -1/6. These values of ns and r practically coincide with the corresponding values in the limit of infinitely large negative ξ.