Non-Abelian Gauge Field Inflation

TL;DR

This paper provides a detailed analysis of Non-Abelian Gauge Field Inflation, demonstrating its robustness, unique perturbation features, and compatibility with current cosmological data, including predictions for observable gravitational waves.

Contribution

It offers a comprehensive numerical and analytical study of gauge-flation, highlighting its robustness and distinctive perturbation characteristics compared to standard models.

Findings

Achieves sufficient e-folds with various initial conditions

Predicts a tensor-to-scalar ratio r>0.05 detectable by Planck

Fits cosmological data with specific parameters Lambda and g

Abstract

In [arXiv:1102.1513] we introduced an inflationary scenario, Non-Abelian Gauge Field Inflation or gauge-flation for short, in which slow-roll inflation is driven by non-Abelian gauge field minimally coupled to gravity. We present a more detailed analysis, both numerical and analytical, of the gauge-flation. By studying the phase diagrams of the theory, we show that getting enough number of e-folds during a slow-roll inflation is fairly robust to the choice of initial gauge field values. In addition, we present a detailed analysis of the cosmic perturbation theory in gauge-flation which has many special and interesting features compared the standard scalar-driven inflationary models. The specific gauge-flation model we study in this paper has two parameters, a cutoff scale Lambda and the gauge coupling g. Fitting our results with the current cosmological data fixes \Lambda\sim 10 H \sim 10^{15} GeV (H is the Hubble parameter) and g\sim 10^{-4}, which are in the natural range of parameters in generic particle physics beyond standard models. Our model also predicts a tensor-to-scalar ratio r>0.05, in the range detectable by the Planck satellite.