Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics – Cosmology and Extragalactic Astrophysics
Scientific paper
2009-12-28
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astrophysics
Cosmology and Extragalactic Astrophysics
21 pages
Scientific paper
Inflation models can have an early phase of inflation where the evolution of the inflaton is driven by quantum fluctuations before entering the phase driven by the slope of the scalar field potential. For a Coleman-Weinberg potential this quantum phase lasts 10^{7-8} e-foldings. A long period of fluctuation driven growth of the inflation field can possibly take the inflaton to the bottom of its potential, or past \phi_*, the value of the field where our current horizon scale crosses the horizon. Alternatively, even if the field does not cross \phi_*, the inflaton could have high kinetic energy at the end of this phase. All these possibilities will change inflation and the density spectrum significantly. Therefore we study these issues in the context of new inflation, chaotic inflation and natural inflation. We find that the quantum phase is negligible for chaotic and natural inflation while for new inflation it does not preclude subsequent classical slow roll inflation. New scenarios where cosmological relevant scales leave during the quantum phase are explored but are found to be unfeasible. A new phase of thermal fluctuation driven inflation is proposed, in which during inflation the inflaton evolution is governed by fluctuations from a sustained thermal radiation bath rather than by a scalar field potential.
Berera Arjun
Rangarajan Raghavan
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