Kinetic Term Anarchy for Polynomial Chaotic Inflation

TL;DR

This paper explores how random distributions of kinetic term coefficients can produce flat inflaton potentials over super-Planckian fields, affecting inflation predictions and revisiting polynomial chaotic inflation in supergravity.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach where random kinetic term coefficients lead to approximate shift symmetry, impacting inflationary potential and observable predictions.

Findings

Potential remains relatively flat due to kinetic term randomness.

Predicted spectral index and tensor-to-scalar ratio can significantly deviate from simple models.

Revisits polynomial chaotic inflation within supergravity framework.

Abstract

We argue that there may arise a relatively flat inflaton potential over super-Planckian field values with an approximate shift symmetry, if the coefficients of the kinetic terms for many singlet scalars are subject to a certain random distribution. The inflaton potential generically contains various shift-symmetry breaking terms, leading to a possibly large deviation of the predicted values of the spectral index and tensor-to-scalar ratio from those of the simple quadratic chaotic inflation. We revisit a polynomial chaotic inflation in supergravity as such.