Desensitizing Inflation from the Planck Scale
Journal
JHEP 1009:057,2010
Journal Volume
2010
Journal Issue
9
Date Issued
2010-04-22
Author(s)
Daniel Green
Abstract
A new mechanism to control Planck-scale corrections to the inflationary eta
parameter is proposed. A common approach to the eta problem is to impose a
shift symmetry on the inflaton field. However, this symmetry has to remain
unbroken by Planck-scale effects, which is a rather strong requirement on
possible ultraviolet completions of the theory. In this paper, we show that the
breaking of the shift symmetry by Planck-scale corrections can be
systematically suppressed if the inflaton field interacts with a conformal
sector. The inflaton then receives an anomalous dimension in the conformal
field theory, which leads to sequestering of all dangerous high-energy
corrections. We analyze a number of models where the mechanism can be seen in
action. In our most detailed example we compute the exact anomalous dimensions
via a-maximization and show that the eta problem can be solved using only
weakly-coupled physics.
Subjects
Cosmology of theories beyond the SM | Supersymmetric effective theories; High Energy Physics - Theory; High Energy Physics - Theory; astro-ph.CO; High Energy Physics - Phenomenology
Description
34 pages, 3 figures.
Type
journal article