False vacuum energy dominated inflation with large and the importance of
arXiv:1406.1424 · doi:10.1088/1475-7516/2014/10/015
Abstract
We investigate to which extent and under which circumstances false vacuum energy () dominated slow-roll inflation is compatible with a large tensor-to-scalar ratio , as indicated by the recent BICEP2 measurement. With we refer to a constant contribution to the inflaton potential, present before a phase transition takes place and absent in the true vacuum of the theory, like e.g. in hybrid inflation. Based on model-independent considerations, we derive an upper bound on the possible amount of domination and highlight the importance of higher-order runnings of the scalar spectral index (beyond ) in order to realise scenarios of dominated inflation. We study the conditions for domination explicitly with an inflaton potential reconstruction around the inflaton field value 50 e-folds before the end of inflation, taking into account the present observational data. To this end, we provide the up-to-date parameter constraints within CDM + + + using the cosmological parameter estimation code Monte Python together with the Boltzmann code CLASS.
16 pages, 5 figures; v2: matches publication in JCAP
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