Multi-phase induced inflation in theories with non-minimal coupling to gravity

TL;DR

This paper explores a multi-phase inflation model with two flat regions, addressing classical cosmology issues and aligning with observational data, with potential applications in Higgs-Axion relaxation and $eta$-attractors.

Contribution

It introduces a novel multi-phase inflation scenario with dual flat regions, including a saddle point, and demonstrates its consistency with data and its relation to $eta$-attractors.

Findings

Inflation at the saddle point can have arbitrarily low scale.

The model is consistent with observational data.

It relates to $eta$-attractors in certain limits.

Abstract

In this paper we investigate the induced inflation with two flat regions: one Starobinsky-like plateau in big field regime and one shorter plateau around the saddle point of the Einstein frame potential. This multi-phase inflationary scenario can be used to solve the problem of classical cosmology. The inflation at the saddle-point plateau is consistent with the data and can have arbitrarily low scale. The results can be useful in the context of the Higgs-Axion relaxation and in a certain limit they are equivalent to the $\alpha$-attractors.