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 (25)

• Lorentz-Violating Extension of the Standard Model
• The Standard Model Higgs boson as the inflaton
• CPT Violation and the Standard Model
• BICEP2 I: Detection Of B-mode Polarization at Degree Angular Scales
• The Effective Field Theory of Inflation
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• Inflationary Cosmology
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• The effective field theory treatment of quantum gravity
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• Grand unification and enhanced quantum gravitational effects
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• Effective theory for quantum gravity
• The flavor of quantum gravity
• On the Precision of a Length Measurement
• Effective Theory for Dark Matter and a New Force in the Dark Matter Sector
• Grand unification through gravitational effects
• Do Mixed States save Effective Field Theory from BICEP?
• Why does the effective field theory of inflation work?
• Quantum Gravitational Effects and Grand Unification

Cited by in corpus (10)

• 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
• Theoretical bounds on dark matter masses
• Hidden Sector and Gravity
• A possible solution to the Hubble tension from quantum gravity
• Curvaton and quantum gravity effect on the tensor to scalar ratio of the chaotic inflation
• Implications of Quantum Gravity for Dark Matter