A potential mechanism for inflation from swampland conjectures

Inflation is the currently accepted paradigm for the beginnings of the Universe. To explain the observed almost scale invariant spectrum of density perturbations with only a slight spectral tilt, inflation must have been “slow roll”, that is with a potential with sufficiently small slope. While the...

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Main Author: Hao Geng
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Elsevier 2020-06-01
Series:Physics Letters B
Online Access:http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0370269320302343
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author Hao Geng
author_facet Hao Geng
author_sort Hao Geng
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description Inflation is the currently accepted paradigm for the beginnings of the Universe. To explain the observed almost scale invariant spectrum of density perturbations with only a slight spectral tilt, inflation must have been “slow roll”, that is with a potential with sufficiently small slope. While the origin of inflationary structure is intrinsically quantum mechanical, gravity gets treated semiclassically within inflationary models. Recent work, in terms of the so called de-Sitter swampland conjecture, has called into question whether slow roll inflation is consistent with a complete theory of quantum gravity in the presence of a positive vacuum energy density, which is a key ingredient in the inflationary paradigm. In this work, we show that, in fact, if we understand this conjecture correctly and with another swampland conjecture, the so-called distance conjecture, involved we get a potential mechanism for slow roll inflation and we argue that here fine-tuning is not a technical problem.
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spelling doaj.art-d3e1d015852743778d60873279e43c972022-12-21T19:26:17ZengElsevierPhysics Letters B0370-26932020-06-01805A potential mechanism for inflation from swampland conjecturesHao Geng0Department of Physics, University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195-1560, USAInflation is the currently accepted paradigm for the beginnings of the Universe. To explain the observed almost scale invariant spectrum of density perturbations with only a slight spectral tilt, inflation must have been “slow roll”, that is with a potential with sufficiently small slope. While the origin of inflationary structure is intrinsically quantum mechanical, gravity gets treated semiclassically within inflationary models. Recent work, in terms of the so called de-Sitter swampland conjecture, has called into question whether slow roll inflation is consistent with a complete theory of quantum gravity in the presence of a positive vacuum energy density, which is a key ingredient in the inflationary paradigm. In this work, we show that, in fact, if we understand this conjecture correctly and with another swampland conjecture, the so-called distance conjecture, involved we get a potential mechanism for slow roll inflation and we argue that here fine-tuning is not a technical problem.http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0370269320302343
spellingShingle Hao Geng
A potential mechanism for inflation from swampland conjectures
Physics Letters B
title A potential mechanism for inflation from swampland conjectures
title_full A potential mechanism for inflation from swampland conjectures
title_fullStr A potential mechanism for inflation from swampland conjectures
title_full_unstemmed A potential mechanism for inflation from swampland conjectures
title_short A potential mechanism for inflation from swampland conjectures
title_sort potential mechanism for inflation from swampland conjectures
url http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0370269320302343
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