Transitioning from a bounce to $R^2$ inflation

Abstract

Non-singular bouncing cosmologies are well--motivated models for the early universe. Recent observational data are consistent with positive spatial curvature and allow for a natural collapsing and bouncing phase in the very early universe. Additionally, bouncing cosmologies have the potential to rectify conceptual shortcomings identified in the theory of inflation, such as the singularity problem. In this paper we present a classical bouncing model in the context of modified gravity, including an $R^2$-term in the action. We show that after the bounce, the universe enters naturally a period of inflation, driven by the $R^2$--term. We analyse the stability of the model and find that the scalaron assists the stability of the model.

19 pages, 8 figures

References in corpus (9)

• Planck evidence for a closed Universe and a possible crisis for cosmology
• A Critical Review of Classical Bouncing Cosmologies
• G-Bounce Inflation: Towards Nonsingular Inflation Cosmology with Galileon Field
• Revealing the effects of curvature on the cosmological models
• A classical bounce: constraints and consequences
• Non-singular Bounce Cosmology from Lagrange Multiplier $F(R)$ Gravity
• A classical, non-singular, bouncing universe
• Bouncing Cosmological Isotropic Solutions in Scalar-Tensor Gravity
• Bouncing Cosmologies

Cited by in corpus (3)

• Testing scale-invariant inflation against cosmological data
• Reconstruction of the singularity-free $f(\mathcal{R})$ gravity via Raychaudhuri equations
• Bouncing cosmologies from Born-Infeld-type gravity