Talk detail

Participant	UNNIKRISHNAN, SANIL
Institution	The Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA) - Post Bag 4, Ganeshkhind, Pune University Campus, - Pune - Maharastra - India

Session	CM1	Accepted		Order	Time
Talk	Oral abstract	Title	Improving inflation using non canonical scalar fields
Co-authors	Varun Sahni and Aleksey Toporensky
Abstract	Inflation driven by non canonical scalar fields is discussed. Our results emphasize the fact that non-canonical scalars can significantly improve the viability of inflationary models. They accomplish this by decreasing the tensor-to-scalar ratio while simultaneously increasing the value of the scalar spectral index, thereby redeeming models which are incompatible with the cosmic microwave background (CMB) in their canonical version. For instance, the non-canonical version of the chaotic inflationary model with a quartic potential is found to agree with observations for values of the coupling constant as large as unity ! The exponential potential can also provide a reasonable fit to CMB observations. A central result of this paper is that steep potentials such as inverse power law potentials usually associated with dark energy, can drive inflation in the non-canonical setting. This could open the possibility of constructing quintessential inflation models based on non canonical scalars.