The cosmological constant (term) is the simplest way, presently known, to illustrate the accelerating expansion of the universe. However, because of/despite its simple appearance, there is much confusion surrounding its essence. Theorists have been asking questions for years: Is there a mechanism to explain this term? Is it really a constant or a variable? Moreover, it seems that we have created a huge gulf separating the theories of inflation and accelerating expansion. Can we eliminate such an uncomfortable discontinuity?
Abstract In this paper, we will journey to see the growth of the universe from the very beginning of inflation. To simplify our discussion, we will briefly "turn off" the effects of real and dark matter and shall use inflaton (a classical scalar field) dynamics with a time-varying inflaton potential V(phi,t) as the screen to watch this process. Relying on these conditions, we propose a non-traditional method of obtaining the solution of scale factor R(t), which is only dependent on phi'(t)^2, and discover that the term R"(t)/R(t) will be a constant after kinetic inflaton phi'(t) is at rest. This result can be regarded as the effective cosmological constant phenomenally. Moreover, we will also "rebuild" V(phi,t), realize its evolutionary process and then, according to the relationship between V(phi,t) and phi'(t)^2, it will be possible to smoothly describe the whole evolution of the universe from the epoch of inflation. Therefore, the implications of our findings will mean that the gulf between theories will disappear. Lastly, we will also see how the formula could provide a framework for solving the old and new cosmological constant problems as well as much more besides.
We present a setup that provides a partial UV-completion of the ghost inflation model up to a scale which can be almost as high as the Planck mass. This is achieved by coupling the inflaton to the Lorentz-violating sector described by the Einstein-aether theory or its khronometric version. Compared to previous works on ghost inflation our setup allows to go beyond the study of small perturbations and include the background dynamics in a unified framework. In the specific regime when the expansion of the Universe is dominated by the kinetic energy of the inflaton we find that the model predicts…
Recently, few cosmological models with additional non-Riemannian volume form(s) have been proposed. In this article we use Supernovae type Ia experimental data to test one of these models which provides a unified description of both dark energy via dynamically generated cosmological constant and dark matter as a "dust" fluid due to a hidden nonlinear Noether symmetry. It turns out that the model allows various scenarios of the future Universe evolution and in the same time perfectly fits contemporary observational data. Further, we investigate the influence of an additional inflaton field with…
The inflaton is highly likely to settle in a squeezed vacuum state after inflation. The relic inflaton after inflation and reheating undergoes a damped oscillatory motion and contributes to the effective cosmological constant. We interpret the renormalized energy density from the squeezed vacuum state as an effective cosmological constant. Using the recent observational data on the cosmological constant, we find the constraint on the squeeze parameter of the inflaton in the early universe.
We show that the inflaton coupling to all other fields is exponentially suppressed during inflation in the cosmological $α$-attractor models. In the context of supergravity, this feature is a consequence of the underlying hyperbolic geometry of the moduli space which has a flat direction corresponding to the inflaton field. A combination of these factors protects the asymptotic flatness of the inflaton potential.
In a recent work, we demonstrated that a modified gravity model in which a scalar "darkon" field is coupled to both the standard Riemannian metric and to another non-Riemannian volume form is compatible with observational data from Supernovae Type Ia. Here, we investigate a more complicated model with an additional "inflaton" scalar field. We demonstrate numerically that the model can qualitatively reproduce the Universe inflation epoch, matter dominated epoch, and present accelerating expansion in a seamless way. We show that such solutions occur only when the model parameters are within a ve…
Amplifying the Cosmological Collider with Ghost Spectators
Brazilian Center for Research in Physics (CBPF)（巴西物理研究中心）；Federal University of Espírito Santo (UFES)（圣埃斯皮里图联邦大学）；Scuola Normale Superiore（比萨高等师范学院）；INFN（意大利国家核物理研究所）
We present a cosmological model arising from a gravitational theory with an infinite tower of higher-order curvature invariants that can reproduce the entire evolution of the Universe: from inflation to late-time acceleration, without invoking an inflaton nor a cosmological constant. The theory is Einsteinian-like. The field equations for a Friedmann-Lemaître-Robertson-Walker metric are of second-order and can reproduce a late-time evolution that is consistent with the acceleration provided by the cosmological constant at low redshift. Our results force us to reinterpret the nature of dark ene…
We report on our independent investigations of the puzzle of cosmological perturbations in extended quasidilaton. We confirm the claims of presence of the Boulware-Deser ghost. We use both the language of cosmological perturbations with broken diffeomorphisms and the Stuckelberg approach.
The $N=1$ supergravity models of cosmological inflation with inflaton belonging to a massive vector multiplet and spontaneous SUSY breaking after inflation are reformulated as the supersymmetric $U(1)$ gauge theories of a massless vector superfield interacting with the Higgs and Polonyi chiral superfields, all coupled to supergravity. The $U(1)$ gauge sector is identified with the $U(1)$ gauge fields of the super-GUT coupled to supergravity, whose gauge group has a $U(1)$ factor. A positive cosmological constant (dark energy) is included. The scalar potential is calculated, and its de Sitter v…
We construct the gauge invariant free action for cosmological perturbations for the nonminimally coupled inflaton field in the Jordan frame. For this the phase space formalism is used, which keeps track of all the dynamical and constraint fields. We perform explicit conformal transformations to demonstrate the physical equivalence between the Jordan and Einstein frames at the level of quadratic perturbations. We show how to generalize the formalism to the case of a more complicated scalar sector with an internal symmetry, such as Higgs inflation. This work represents a first step in developing…
We have carried out detailed $k$-mode analysis of single-inflaton slow-roll inflationary perturbations including quantum fluctuations by setting up non-linear coupled differential equations of inflaton field ($ϕ$), its perturbation ($δϕ$) and the metric perturbation (the Bardeen potential, $Φ_B$), and calculated the number of e-folds ($N$), scalar spectral index ($n_s$), tensor spectral index ($n_h$), scalar power spectrum ($Δ_s$), tensor power spectrum ($Δ_h$), tensor-to-scalar ratio ($r$) and the Hubble parameter ($H$) for different $k$ values at the horizon crossing. In these calculations w…
We explore the whole phase space of the so called Veneziano/QCD ghost dark energy models where the dynamics of the inner trapping horizon is ignored and also the more realistic models where the time-dependence of the horizon is taken into consideration. We pay special attention to the choice of phase space variables leading to bounded and compact phase space so that no critical point of physical interest is missing. It is demonstrated that ghost dark energy is not a suitable candidate to explain the presently accepted cosmological paradigm since no critical point associated with matter dominan…
In construction of an inflationary model, one usually assumes that the matter sector of the gravitational action is minimally coupled to the background. It means that the matter (inflaton) part of the action is coupled with the same metric of the gravitational part. We elaborate on this assumption and investigate some of the consequences. We assume that the gravitational and the inflaton sectors belong to different units (or conformal frames). We show that this coupling can convert a single-field inflationary model into a two-field one with a mixed kinetic term. The energy-momentum tensor of t…
Recently it was argued that gravity with the squire of the Ricci tensor can be stabilized by adding constraints to the theory. This was so far demonstrated for fluctuations on the Minkowski/de Sitter background. We show that the same scheme works equally well for removing Ostrogradski's ghost from fluctuations on a cosmological background in generic $f(R,R_{μν}^2,C_{μνρσ}^2)$-type theories of gravity. We also derive the general formula for the spectrum of primordial tensor perturbations from the stabilized theory.
Recently, it has been shown that during preheating the entropy modes circulating in the loops, which correspond to the inflaton decay products, meaningfully modify the cosmological correlation functions at superhorizon scales. In this paper, we determine the significance of the same effect when reheating occurs in the perturbative regime. In a typical two scalar field model, the magnitude of the loop corrections are shown to depend on several parameters like the background inflaton amplitude in the beginning of reheating, the inflaton decay rate and the inflaton mass. Although the loop contrib…
A special class of conformal gravity theories is proposed to solve the long standing problem of the fine-tuned cosmological constant. In the proposed model time evolution of the inflaton field leaves behind a nearly vanishing, but finite value of dark energy density of order (a few meV)$^4$ to explain the late-time accelerating universe. A multiple scalar inflaton field is assumed to have a conformal coupling to the Ricci scalar curvature in the lagrantian, which results in, after a Weyl rescaling to the Einstein metric frame, modification of inflaton kinetic and potential terms along with its…
Proposing new solution problems of the hierarchy and smallness of the cosmological constant using the Tev scale of the Standard Model in new framework of the higher-order gravity.
Within the theory of the ghost-free bigravity, we present the most general cosmological solution for which the physical metric is homogeneous and isotropic, while the second metric is inhomogeneous. The solution includes a matter source and exists for any values of the theory parameters. The physical metric describes a universe with the late time acceleration due to the effective cosmological term mimicked by the graviton mass. When perturbed, this universe should rest approximately homogeneous and isotropic in space regions small compared to the graviton Compton length. In the limit where the…
We consider a scalar field with a negative kinetic term minimally coupled to gravity. We obtain an exact non-static spherically symmetric solution which describes a wormhole in cosmological setting. The wormhole is shown to connect two homogeneous spatially flat universes expanding with acceleration. Depending on the wormhole's mass parameter $m$ the acceleration can be constant (the de Sitter case) or infinitely growing.
In the simplest Higgs phase of gravity called ghost condensation, an accelerating universe with a phantom era (w<-1) can be realized without ghost or any other instabilities. In this paper we show how to reconstruct the potential in the Higgs sector Lagrangian from a given cosmological history (H(t), ρ(t)). This in principle allows us to constrain the potential by geometrical information of the universe such as supernova distance-redshift relation. We also derive the evolution equation for cosmological perturbations in the Higgs phase of gravity by employing a systematic low energy expansion. …
In the setup of ghost condensation model the generalized second law of black hole thermodynamics can be respected under a radiatively stable assumption that couplings between the field responsible for ghost condensate and matter fields such as those in the Standard Model are suppressed by the Planck scale. Since not only black holes but also cosmology are expected to play important roles towards our better understanding of gravity, we consider a cosmological setup to test the theory of ghost condensation. In particular we shall show that the de Sitter entropy bound proposed by Arkani-Hamed, et…
The recent discovery of a ghost-free, non-linear extension of the Fierz-Pauli theory of massive gravity, and its bigravity formulation, introduced new possibilities of interpreting cosmological observations, in particular, the apparent late-time accelerated expansion of the Universe. Here we discuss such possibilities by studying the background cosmology of the model and comparing its predictions to different cosmological measurements. We place constraints on the model parameters through an extensive statistical analysis of the model, and compare its viability to that of the standard model of …
We derive general analytic formulae for the power spectrum and spectral index of the curvature perturbation produced during inflation driven by a multi-component inflaton field, up to the second order in the slow-roll approximation. We do not assume any specific properties of the potential or the metric on the scalar field space, except for the slow-roll condition, Einstein gravity, and the absence of any permanent isocurvature modes.
Recently, we have performed research on the subject of the cosmological constant problem. The scenario is based on two postulates for inflationary theory: one is that inflaton $ϕ$ can interact with radiation (relativistic particles); the other is that radiation will be created continuously during and after the epoch of inflation. According to these postulates and from a "macroscopic perspective", we discover that radiation can be viewed as a product of the interaction between $\dotϕ$ and some "effective kinetic frictional force" that exists in inflaton dynamics. Deducing and surmising from "ef…
Models of inflation with super-Planckian excursion seem well in agreement with the recent observations of B- mode polarization in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation by the BICEP2 data. In this note, we highlight the challenges faced by such models from ultraviolet (UV) completion. In particular, we will discus radiative corrections to the inflaton Lagrangian and to the gravitational sector. We will emphasize why we would require an UV complete theory of gravity to tackle some of the issues for the super-Planckian excursion. In particular, we will highlight how higher derivative te…
We study aspects of quantum cosmology in the presence of a modified space-time geometry. In particular, within the context of Gravity's Rainbow modified geometry, motivated from quantum gravity corrections at the Planck energy scale, we show that the distortion of the metric leads to a Wheeler-De Witt equation whose solution admits outgoing plane waves. Hence, a period of cosmological inflation may arise without the need for introducing an inflaton field.
A cosmological constant in the regime of low space-time curvature is calculated in the recently proposed version of F(R) supergravity with a generic cubic function F. The F(R) supergravity is the N=1 supersymmetric extension of f(R) gravity. The cubic model is known to successfully describe a chaotic (slow-roll) inflation in the regime of high space-time curvature. We find that a simple extension of the same model allows a positive cosmological constant in the regime of low space-time curvature. The inflaton superfield in F(R) supergravity (like inflaton in f(R) gravity) violates the Strong En…
Assuming the existence of a scalar field which undergoes "ghost condensation" and which has a suitably chosen potential, it is possible to obtain a non-singular bouncing cosmology in the presence of regular matter and radiation. The potential for the ghost condensate field can be chosen such that the cosmological bounce is stable against the presence of anisotropic stress. Cosmological fluctuations on long wavelengths relevant to current cosmological observations pass through the bounce unaffected by the new physics which yields the bounce. Thus, this model allows for the realization of the "m…
We present a survey of the known cosmological and black hole solutions in ghost-free bigravity and massive gravity theories. These can be divided into three classes. First, there are solutions with proportional metrics, which are the same as in General Relativity with a cosmological term, which can be positive, negative or zero. Secondly, for spherically symmetric systems, there are solutions with non-bidiagonal metrics. The g-metric fulfills Einstein equations with a positive cosmological term and a matter source, while the f-metric is anti-de Sitter. The third class contains solutions with b…
We present the detailed derivation of the recently announced most general cosmological solution with homogeneous and isotropic metric in the ghost-free massive gravity theory. We use the standard parametrization of the theory in terms of the matrix square root, and then show how the same results are recovered within the tetrad formulation. The solution obtained includes the matter source, it exists for generic values of the theory parameters, and it describes a universe that can be spatially open, closed, or flat, and that shows the late time acceleration due to the effective cosmological term…
Adiabatic (curvature) perturbations are produced during a period of cosmological inflation that is driven by a single scalar field, the inflaton. On particle physics grounds -- though -- it is natural to expect that this scalar field is coupled to other scalar degrees of freedom. This gives rise to oscillations between the perturbation of the inflaton field and the perturbations of the other scalar degrees of freedom, similar to the phenomenon of neutrino oscillations. Since the degree of the mixing is governed by the squared mass matrix of the scalar fields, the oscillations can occur even if…
We study the creation and evolution of cosmological perturbations in renormalizable quadratic gravity with a Weyl term. We adopt a prescription that implies the stability of the vacuum at the price of introducing a massive spin-two ghost state, leading to the loss of unitarity. The theory may still be predictive regardless the interpretation of non-unitary processes provided that their rate is negligible compared to the Universe expansion rate. This implies that the ghost is effectively stable. In such a setup, there are two scalar degrees of freedom excited during inflation. The first one is …
We reconsider the fine-tuning problem of scalar-driven inflation arising from the need to couple the inflaton to ordinary matter in order to make reheating efficient. Quantum fluctuations of this matter induce Coleman-Weinberg corrections to the inflaton potential, depending (for de Sitter background) in a complex way on the ratio of the inflaton to the Hubble parameter. These corrections are not Planck-suppressed and cannot be completely subtracted because they are not even local for a general geometry. A previous study showed that it is not satisfactory to subtract a local function of just t…
We propose a novel scenario to explain the small cosmological constant (CC) by a finely tuned inflaton potential. The tuned shape is stable under radiative corrections, and our setup is technically natural. The peculiar po- tential approximately satisfies the following conditions: the inflation is eternal if CC is positive, and not eternal if CC is negative. By introducing a slowly varying CC from a positive value to a negative value, the dominant volume of the Universe after the inflation turns out to have a vanishingly small CC. The scenario does not require eternal inflation but the e-foldi…
We suggest a new type of hill-top inflation originating from the initial conditions in the form of the microcanonical density matrix for the cosmological model with a large number of quantum fields conformally coupled to gravity. Initial conditions for inflation are set up by cosmological instantons describing underbarrier oscillations in the vicinity of the inflaton potential maximum. These periodic oscillations of the inflaton field and cosmological scale factor are obtained within the approximation of two coupled oscillators subject to the slow roll regime in the Euclidean time. This regime…
The cosmological constant problem and the compatibility of gravity with quantum mechanics are the two most pressing problems in all of gravitational theory. While string theory nicely addresses the latter, it has so far failed to provide any compelling solution to the former. On the other hand, while conformal gravity nicely addresses the cosmological constant problem (by naturally quenching the amount by which the cosmological constant gravitates rather than by quenching the cosmological constant itself), the fourth order derivative conformal theory has long been thought to possess a ghost wh…
Invertible disformal transformations are a useful tool to investigate ghost-free scalar-tensor theories. By performing a higher-derivative generalization of the invertible disformal transformation on Horndeski theories, we construct a novel class of ghost-free scalar-tensor theories, which we dub generalized disformal Horndeski theories. Specifically, these theories lie beyond the quadratic/cubic DHOST class. We explore cosmological perturbations to identify a subclass where gravitational waves propagate at the speed of light and clarify the conditions for the absence of ghost/gradient instabi…
It is known that the perturbative instability of tensor excitations in higher derivative gravity may not take place if the initial frequency of the gravitational waves are below the Planck threshold. One can assume that this is a natural requirement if the cosmological background is sufficiently mild, since in this case the situation is qualitatively close to the free gravitational wave in flat space. Here, we explore the opposite situation and consider the effect of a very far from Minkowski radiation-dominated or de Sitter cosmological background with a large Hubble rate, e.g., typical of an…
In this work we investigate the inflationary phenomenological implications of a recently developed ghost-free Gauss-Bonnet theory of gravity. The resulting theory can be viewed as a scalar Einstein-Gauss-Bonnet theory of gravity, so by employing the formalism for cosmological perturbations for the latter theory, we calculate the slow-roll indices and the observational indices, and we compare these with the latest observational data. Due to the presence of a freely chosen function in the model, in principle any cosmological evolution can be realized, so we specify the Hubble rate and the freely…
In the path integral formulation of the reduced phase space Loop Quantum Gravity (LQG), we propose a new approach to allow the spatial cubic lattice (graph) to change dynamically in the physical time evolution. The equations of motion of the path integral derive the effective dynamics of cosmology from the full LQG, when we focus on solutions with homogeneous and isotropic symmetry. The resulting cosmological effective dynamics with the dynamical lattice improves the effective dynamics obtained earlier from the path integral with fixed spatial lattice: The improved effective dynamics recovers …
We study the scalar sector of the Two Measures Field Theory (TMT) model in the context of cosmological dynamics. The scalar sector includes the inflaton ϕand the Higgs \upsilon fields. The model possesses gauge and scale invariance. The latter is spontaneously broken due to intrinsic features of the TMT dynamics. In the model with the inflaton ϕalone, in different regions of the parameter space the following different effects can take place without fine tuning of the parameters and initial conditions: a) Possibility of resolution of the old cosmological constant problem: this is done in a cons…
We present a novel cosmological solution in the framework of extended quasidilaton theory which underwent scrutiny recently. We only consider terms that do not generate the Boulware-Deser degree of freedom, hence the "ghost-free" quasidilaton theory, and show three new branches of cosmological evolution therein. One of the solutions passes the perturbative stability tests. This new solution exhibits a late time self-acceleration and all graviton polarizations acquire masses that converge to a constant in the asymptotic future. Moreover, all modes propagate at the speed of light. We propose tha…
We study primordial perturbations generated from quantum fluctuations of an inflaton based on the formalism of stochastic gravity. Integrating out the degree of freedom of the inflaton field, we analyze the time evolution of the correlation function of the curvature perturbation at tree level and compare it with the prediction made by the gauge-invariant linear perturbation theory. We find that our result coincides with that of the gauge-invariant perturbation theory if the e-folding from the horizon crossing time is smaller than some critical value ($\sim |$slow-roll parameter $|^{-1}$), whic…
Motivated by the ghost condensate model, we study the Randall-Sundrum (RS) brane-world with an arbitrary function of the higher derivative kinetic terms, $\mathcal{P}(X)$, where $X=-(\nabla ϕ)^{2}$. The five-dimensional Einstein equations reduce to two equations of motion with a constraint between $\mathcal{P}(X)$ and the five-dimensional cosmological constant on the brane. For a static extra dimension, $\mathcal{P}(X)$ has solutions for both a negative kinetic scalar (so called {\textit{ghost}}) as well as an ordinary scalar field. However ghost condensation cannot take place. We show that sm…
The density perturbations generated when the inflaton decay rate is perturbed by a light scalar field $χ$ are studied. By explicitly solving the perturbation equations for the system of two scalar fields and radiation, we show that even in low energy-scale inflation nearly scale-invariant spectra of scalar perturbations with an amplitude set by observations are obtained through the conversion of $χ$ fluctuations into adiabatic density perturbations. We demonstrate that the spectra depend on the average decay rate of the inflaton & on the inflaton fluctuations. We then apply this new mechanism …
We study the origin of dark matter based on the ghost-free bigravity theory with twin matter fluids. The present cosmic acceleration can be explained by the existence of graviton mass, while dark matter is required in several cosmological situations [the galactic missing mass, the cosmic structure formation and the standard big-bang scenario (the cosmological nucleosynthesis vs the CMB observation)]. Assuming that the Compton wavelength of the massive graviton is shorter than a galactic scale, we show the bigravity theory can explain dark matter by twin matter fluid as well as the cosmic accel…
Bimetric gravity theories allow for many different types of cosmological solutions, but not all of them are theoretically allowed. In this work we discuss the conditions to satisfy the Higuchi bound and to avoid gradient instabilities in the scalar sector at the linear level. We find that in expanding universes the ratio of the scale factors of the reference and observable metric has to increase at all times. This automatically implies a ghost-free helicity-2 and helicity-0 sector and enforces a phantom dark energy. Furthermore, the condition for the absence of gradient instabilities in the sc…
By using the thermodynamic theory of irreversible processes and Einstein general relativity, a cosmological model is proposed where the early universe is considered as a mixture of a scalar field with a matter field. The scalar field refers to the inflaton while the matter field to the classical particles. The irreversibility is related to a particle production process at the expense of the gravitational energy and of the inflaton energy. The particle production process is represented by a non-equilibrium pressure in the energy-momentum tensor. The non-equilibrium pressure is proportional to t…
We place observational constraints on the Galileon ghost condensate model, a dark energy proposal in cubic-order Horndeski theories consistent with the gravitational-wave event GW170817. The model extends the covariant Galileon by taking an additional higher-order field derivative $X^2$ into account. This allows for the dark energy equation of state $w_{\rm DE}$ to access the region $-2<w_{\rm DE}<-1$ without ghosts. Indeed, this peculiar evolution of $w_{\rm DE}$ is favored over that of the cosmological constant $Λ$ from the joint data analysis of cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation, …
We consider cosmological models with a dynamical dark energy field, and study the presence of three types of commonly found instabilities, namely ghost (when fields have negative kinetic energy), gradient (negative momentum squared) and tachyon (negative mass squared). In particular, we study the linear scalar perturbations of theories with two interacting scalar fields as a proxy for a dark energy and matter fields, and explicitly show how canonical transformations relate these three types of instabilities with each other. We generically show that low-energy ghosts are equivalent to tachyonic…
We explore an effective 4D cosmological model for the universe where the variable cosmological constant governs its evolution and the pressure remains negative along all the expansion. This model is introduced from a 5D vacuum state where the (space-like) extra coordinate is considered as noncompact. The expansion is produced by the inflaton field, which is considered as nonminimally coupled to gravity. We conclude from experiental data that the coupling of the inflaton with gravity should be weak, but variable in different epochs of the evolution of the universe.
Motivated by recent developments in Cosmology we would like to consider an extension of the Ghost DE which we will call as varying Ghost DE. Ghost DE like other models was introduced recently as a possible way to explain accelerated expansion of the Universe. For the phenomenological origin of the varying Ghost dark energy in our Universe we can suggest an existence of some unknown dynamics between the Ghost Dark energy and a fluid which evaporated completely making sense of the proposed effect. Moreover, we assume that this was in the epochs and scales which are unreachable by nowadays experi…
We propose a new mechanism of lepton (L) number asymmetry generation, hence offer an explanation of matter-antimatter imbalance when a significant amount of baryon number is later transformed from this L-number by known electroweak sphaleron mediated process. The basic theoretical framework is a recently proposed multiple scalar-tensor gravity that dynamically solves the cosmological constant problem. The L-asymmetry generation in one of two proposed scenarios is triggered by dynamical relaxation of scalar inflaton field towards the zero cosmological constant. CPT violation (C= charge conjugat…
In inflationary cosmological models driven by an inflaton field the origin of the primordial inhomogeneities which are responsible for large scale structure formation are the quantum fluctuations of the inflaton field. These are usually computed using the standard theory of cosmological perturbations, where both the gravitational and the inflaton fields are linearly perturbed and quantized. The correlation functions for the primordial metric fluctuations and their power spectrum are then computed. Here we introduce an alternative procedure for computing the metric correlations based on the Ein…
The nature of the scalar field responsible for the cosmological inflation, the \qo{inflaton}, is found to be rooted in the most fundamental concept of the Weyl's differential geometry: the parallel displacement of vectors in curved space-time. The Euler-Lagrange theory based on a scalar-tensor Weyl-Dirac Lagrangian leads straightforwardly to the Einstein equation admitting as a source the characteristic energy-momentum tensor of the inflaton field. Within the dynamics of the inflation, e.g. in the slow roll transition from a \qo{false} toward a \qo{true vacuum}, the inflaton's geometry implies…
