Attractors, Universality and Inflation

Abstract

Studies of the initial conditions for inflation have conflicting predictions from exponential suppression to inevitability. At the level of phase space, this conflict arises from the competing intuitions of CPT invariance and thermodynamics. After reviewing this conflict, we enlarge the ensemble beyond phase space to include scalar potential data. We show how this leads to an important contribution from inflection point inflation, enhancing the likelihood of inflation to an inverse cubic power law. In the process, we emphasize the attractor dynamics of the gravity-scalar system and the existence of universality classes from inflection point inflation. Finally, we comment on the predictivity of inflation in light of these results.

32 pages, 8 figures. Typos and figures fixed

References in corpus (5)

• The Effective Field Theory of Inflation
• The Measure Problem in Cosmology
• Accidental Inflation in String Theory
• Attraction towards an inflection point inflation
• A Phase Transition between Small and Large Field Models of Inflation

Cited by in corpus (6)

• One antimatter --- two possible thermodynamics
• Clearing the Brush: The Last Stand of Solo Small Field Inflation
• Dynamics of Mixed Dark Energy Domination in Teleparallel Gravity and Phase-Space Analysis
• Generically large nongaussianity in small multifield inflation
• Coupling q-deformed dark energy to dark matter
• Interacting dark matter and q-deformed dark energy non-minimally coupled to gravity