Extranatural Inflation
Nima Arkani-Hamed, Hsin-Chia Cheng, Paolo Creminelli, Lisa Randall
TL;DR
A new model of inflation is presented in which the inflaton is the extra component of a gauge field in a 5D theory compactified on a circle so that its flatness is not spoiled by higher-dimensional operators or quantum gravity corrections.
Abstract
We present a new model of inflation in which the inflaton is the extra component of a gauge field in a 5d theory compactified on a circle. The chief merit of this model is that the potential comes only from non-local effects so that its flatness is not spoiled by higher dimensional operators or quantum gravity corrections. The model predicts a red spectrum (n ~ 0.96) and a significant production of gravitational waves (r ~ 0.11). We also comment on the relevance of this idea to quintessence.