Excursion into Quantum Gravity via Inflation

Abstract

The discovery of B-modes, and their effect on the fit to inflationary parameters, opens a window to explore quantum gravity. In this paper we adopt an effective theory approach to study quantum gravity effects in inflation. We apply this approach to chaotic and ${\varphi }^4$ inflation, and find that BICEP2 constrains these new operators to values which are consistent with the effective theory approach. This result opens the possibility to study quantum gravity in a systematic fashion, including its effect on Higgs inflation and other Starobisnky-like models.

10 pages, 3 figures

References in corpus (10)

• The Standard Model Higgs boson as the inflaton
• The Effective Field Theory of Inflation
• Effective Field Theory for Inflation
• Inflationary Cosmology
• Remarks on Higgs Inflation
• Grand unification and enhanced quantum gravitational effects
• On the Precision of a Length Measurement
• Effective Theory for Dark Matter and a New Force in the Dark Matter Sector
• Do Mixed States save Effective Field Theory from BICEP?
• Quantum Gravitational Effects and Grand Unification

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Embedding inflation into the Standard Model - more evidence for classical scale invariance
• Resurrecting Quadratic Inflation in No-Scale Supergravity in Light of BICEP2
• Saving Natural Inflation
• Reconstructing inflationary potential from BICEP2 and running of tensor modes
• BICEP2, the Higgs Mass and the SUSY-breaking Scale