Corpuscular slow-roll inflation

We show that a corpuscular description of gravity can lead to an inflationary scenario similar to Starobinsky’s model without requiring the introduction of the inflaton field. All relevant properties are determined by the number of gravitons in the cosmological condensate or, equivalently, by their Compton length. In particular, the relation between the Hubble parameter $H$ and its time derivative $\dot{H}$ required by cosmic microwave background observations at the end of inflation, as well as the (minimum) initial value of the slow-roll parameter, are naturally obtained from the Compton size of the condensate.

Figure 1

Starobinsky’s potential for the inflaton.