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Galileon inflation

Clare Burrage, Claudia de Rham, David Seery, Andrew J. Tolley

Abstract

Galileon inflation is a radiatively stable higher derivative model of inflation. The model is determined by a finite number of relevant operators which are protected by a covariant generalization of the Galileon shift symmetry. We show that the nongaussianity of the primordial density perturbation generated during an epoch of Galileon inflation is a particularly powerful observational probe of these models and that, when the speed of sound is small, fNL can be larger than the usual result fNL ~ 1/c_s^2.

Galileon inflation

Abstract

Galileon inflation is a radiatively stable higher derivative model of inflation. The model is determined by a finite number of relevant operators which are protected by a covariant generalization of the Galileon shift symmetry. We show that the nongaussianity of the primordial density perturbation generated during an epoch of Galileon inflation is a particularly powerful observational probe of these models and that, when the speed of sound is small, fNL can be larger than the usual result fNL ~ 1/c_s^2.

Paper Structure

This paper contains 12 sections, 59 equations.

Table of Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Inflation
  3. Breaking the shift symmetry
  4. Galileon inflation
  5. Infrared completion of the Galileon
  6. Inflation in the de Sitter decoupling limit
  7. Effective field theory for inflation
  8. Fluctuations
  9. Primordial density perturbations
  10. Conclusions
  11. Integrals of the $\mathop{\mathrm{Ei}}\nolimits$ function
  12. Three-point functions