Inflation and reheating in scale-invariant scalar-tensor gravity

Abstract

We consider the scale-invariant inflationary model studied in [1]. The Lagrangian includes all the scale-invariant operators that can be built with combinations of $R$, $R^2$ and one scalar field. The equations of motion show that the symmetry is spontaneously broken after an arbitrarily long inflationary period and a fundamental mass scale is generated. Upon symmetry breaking, and in the Jordan frame, both Hubble function and the scalar field undergo damped oscillations that can eventually amplify Standard Model fields and reheat the Universe. In the present work, we study in detail inflation and the reheating mechanism of this model in the Einstein frame and we compare some of the results with the latest observational data.

Section 4 changed. We explicitly show that inflation is effectively one-field driven. Accepted for publication on "General Relativity and Gravitation"

References in corpus (4)

• New Hubble Space Telescope Discoveries of Type Ia Supernovae at z > 1: Narrowing Constraints on the Early Behavior of Dark Energy
• Reheating in Inflationary Cosmology: Theory and Applications
• Inflationary Cosmology
• Inflation in scale-invariant theories of gravity

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• Scale Invariant Gravity and Black Hole Ringdown