Cosmological inflation driven by holonomy corrections of loop quantum cosmology

TL;DR

This paper explores how holonomy corrections in loop quantum cosmology influence early universe inflation, revealing a super-inflationary phase that sets initial conditions for standard inflation and impacts cosmic microwave background spectra.

Contribution

It demonstrates that holonomy corrections induce a super-inflationary phase in LQC, affecting initial conditions and potentially observable CMB features, which is a novel insight into quantum gravity effects on cosmology.

Findings

A super-inflationary phase occurs near the quantum bounce.

Holonomy corrections influence the suppression of CMB power spectrum.

Different orders of corrections lead to varying suppression effects.

Abstract

At the level of heuristic effective dynamics, we investigate the cosmological inflation with holonomy corrections of loop quantum cosmology (LQC) in the $k=0$ Friedmann-Robertson-Walker model with a single inflaton field subject to a simple potential. In the symmetric bouncing scenario of LQC, the condition for occurrence of the quantum bounce naturally and uniquely fixes the initial conditions at the bouncing epoch. Around the quantum bounce, the universe undergoes a short super-inflationary phase, which drives the inflaton field to its potential hill and thus sets the proper initial conditions for the standard slow-roll inflation. Between the super-inflation and the standard inflation, there is a non-inflationary phase, which violates the slow-roll condition. The violation of slow roll is expected to give some suppression on the low angular power spectrum of the cosmic microwave background and different orders of holonomy corrections shall yield different suppressions.