Slow Roll Inflation: A Somehow Different Perspective

TL;DR

This paper presents a new perspective on slow roll inflation, emphasizing high gravitational friction as the key factor, and reviews a mechanism that enables inflation with steep potentials through enhanced gravitational friction.

Contribution

It introduces the concept that slow roll inflation results from high gravitational friction and reviews a gravitational mechanism to achieve inflation with steep potentials.

Findings

High gravitational friction is crucial for slow roll inflation.

The Gravitationally Enhanced Friction mechanism allows steep potentials to drive inflation.

Reframing inflation theory focus towards models with high gravitational friction.

Abstract

In this note we point out that, contrary to the standard point of view, slow roll inflation is due to high gravitational friction. We show that the requirement of slow roll coincides with the requirement of a flat scalar field potential in the case of minimally coupled scalar field. In this sense, the search for a successful inflationary theory may be more fruitful by shifting the focus on models with high gravitational friction. We review then a gravitational mechanism, the so called "Gravitationally Enhanced Friction" mechanism, such that high gravitational friction is dynamically generated during inflation allowing even steep (i.e. non-flat) scalar potential to inflate.