Abstract
We present a new mechanism for inflation which exhibits a speed limit on scalar motion, generating accelerated expansion even on a steep potential. This arises from explicitly integrating out the short modes of additional fields coupled to the inflaton ϕ via a dimension six operator, yielding an expression for the effective action which includes a nontrivial (logarithmic) function of (∂ϕ)2. The speed limit appears at the branch cut of this logarithm arising in a large flavor expansion, similarly to the square root branch cut in DBI inflation arising in a large color expansion. Finally, we describe observational constraints on the parameters of this model.
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ArXiv ePrint: 2010.00113
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Mathis, D., Mousatov, A., Panagopoulos, G. et al. A new branch of inflationary speed limits. J. High Energ. Phys. 2021, 199 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP10(2021)199
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP10(2021)199