Abstract
We show that inflation can naturally occur at a finite temperature 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.
- Received 5 May 2016
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.117.151301
© 2016 American Physical Society
Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)
Synopsis
Little Higgs Gives Warm Inflaton a Hand
Published 4 October 2016
A concept borrowed from particle physics models called little Higgs gives new strength to the theory of warm inflation.
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