TY - JOUR

T1 - Initial conditions for plateau inflation

T2 - A case study

AU - Tenkanen, Tommi

AU - Tomberg, Eemeli

PY - 2020/4/28

Y1 - 2020/4/28

N2 - We study initial conditions for inflation in scenarios where the inflaton potential has a plateau shape. Such models are those most favored by Planck data and can be obtained in a large number of model classes. As a representative example, we consider Higgs inflation with and without an R2 term in the context of Palatini gravity. We show that inflation with a large number of e-folds generically occurs in a large part of the parameter space without any fine-tuning of parameters even when the scale of inflation and the inflaton field value during inflation are much smaller than the Planck scale. We discuss consequences for detection of primordial gravitational waves and spectral tilt of curvature perturbations, as well as the recently proposed "Trans-Planckian Censorship" conjecture.

AB - We study initial conditions for inflation in scenarios where the inflaton potential has a plateau shape. Such models are those most favored by Planck data and can be obtained in a large number of model classes. As a representative example, we consider Higgs inflation with and without an R2 term in the context of Palatini gravity. We show that inflation with a large number of e-folds generically occurs in a large part of the parameter space without any fine-tuning of parameters even when the scale of inflation and the inflaton field value during inflation are much smaller than the Planck scale. We discuss consequences for detection of primordial gravitational waves and spectral tilt of curvature perturbations, as well as the recently proposed "Trans-Planckian Censorship" conjecture.

U2 - 10.1088/1475-7516/2020/04/050

DO - 10.1088/1475-7516/2020/04/050

M3 - Journal article

AN - SCOPUS:85085698788

VL - 2020

JO - Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics

JF - Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics

SN - 1475-7516

IS - 4

M1 - 050

ER -