Global dynamics and inflationary center manifold and slow-roll approximants

TL;DR

This paper develops a comprehensive dynamical systems framework for scalar field cosmology, introducing new approximation techniques like Padé approximants and analyzing asymptotic behaviors including limit cycles.

Contribution

It presents a global, regular dynamical systems approach to scalar field cosmology, incorporating center manifold and Padé approximants to improve attractor solution approximations.

Findings

Global understanding of solution space achieved

Padé approximants improve early-time attractor approximations

Future behavior characterized by a limit cycle

Abstract

We consider the familiar problem of a minimally coupled scalar field with quadratic potential in flat Friedmann-Lema\^itre-Robertson-Walker cosmology to illustrate a number of techniques and tools, which can be applied to a wide range of scalar field potentials and problems in e.g. modified gravity. We present a global and regular dynamical systems description that yields a global understanding of the solution space, including asymptotic features. We introduce dynamical systems techniques such as center manifold expansions and use Pad\'e approximants to obtain improved approximations for the `attractor solution' at early times. We also show that future asymptotic behavior is associated with a limit cycle, which shows that manifest self-similarity is asymptotically broken toward the future, and give approximate expressions for this behavior. We then combine these results to obtain global approximations for the attractor solution, which, e.g., might be used in the context of global measures. In addition we elucidate the connection between slow-roll based approximations and the attractor solution, and compare these approximations with the center manifold based approximants.