paper

Inflation in gravity models revisited after ACT

arXiv:2508.08927 · doi:10.1088/1475-7516/2025/12/040

Abstract

The gravity models of inflation are revisited in light of the recent observations of cosmic microwave background radiation by Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) and DESI Collaboration. A detailed study of the evolution equations in the Jordan frame is given and a new description of the slow-roll approximation in the -gravity-based models of inflation is proposed. It is found that all those models of inflation are significantly constrained by demanding a higher (than the Planck Telescope value) cosmological tilt of scalar perturbations and a positive running index favored by ACT. It is not difficult to meet the ACT constraints on the scalar tilt by modifying the existing models of inflation, but simultaneously demanding a positive running would rule out many of them. Using the proposed slow-roll approximation in the Jordan frame, we provide a new modification of the Starobinsky inflation model in the framework of gravity, which satisfies all ACT constraints. An extension of our ACT-consistent inflation model to the unified -gravity description of Starobinsky-like inflation and production of primordial black holes on a smaller scale is also proposed.

21 pages in JCAP format, Section 9 and references added, Sections 1 and 10 revised

References in corpus (52)

Cited by in corpus (7)