Warm Little Inflaton

Mar Bastero-Gil, Arjun Berera, Rudnei O. Ramos, Joao G. Rosa

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract / Description of output

We show that inflation can naturally occur at a finite temperature T>H that is sustained by dissipative effects, when the inflaton field corresponds to a pseudo Nambu-Goldstone boson of a broken gauge symmetry. Similar to the Little Higgs scenarios for electroweak symmetry breaking, the flatness of the inflaton potential is protected against both quadratic divergences and the leading thermal corrections. We show that, nevertheless, nonlocal dissipative effects are naturally present and are able to sustain a nearly thermal bath of light particles despite the accelerated expansion of the Universe. As an example, we discuss the dynamics of chaotic warm inflation with a quartic potential and show that the associated observational predictions are in very good agreement with the latest Planck results. This model constitutes the first realization of warm inflation requiring only a small number of fields; in particular, the inflaton is directly coupled to just two light fields.
Original languageEnglish
Article number151301
Pages (from-to)1-5
Number of pages5
JournalPhysical Review Letters
Volume117
Issue number15
Early online date4 Oct 2016
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 7 Oct 2016

Keywords / Materials (for Non-textual outputs)

  • hep-ph
  • astro-ph.CO
  • gr-qc

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