Extranatural Inflation
arXiv:hep-th/0301218 · doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.90.221302
Abstract
We present a new model of inflation in which the inflaton is the extra component of a gauge field in a 5d theory compactified on a circle. The chief merit of this model is that the potential comes only from non-local effects so that its flatness is not spoiled by higher dimensional operators or quantum gravity corrections. The model predicts a red spectrum (n ~ 0.96) and a significant production of gravitational waves (r ~ 0.11). We also comment on the relevance of this idea to quintessence.
4 pages. Minor corrections and references added. Accepted for PRL