Inflation in Random Landscapes with two energy scales

TL;DR

This paper explores how a multi-scale string theory landscape influences inflation dynamics, initial conditions, and observable density fluctuations, revealing a unique distribution for fluctuation amplitude shaped by the landscape's parameters.

Contribution

It introduces a model of inflation in a multi-scale landscape with a hierarchical energy structure, analyzing the resulting probability distributions for inflationary observables.

Findings

The distribution of density fluctuation amplitude Q has a unique shape.

Initial inflation conditions are set by tunneling through high-energy barriers.

The distribution for Q depends on the landscape parameters.

Abstract

We investigate inflation in a multi-dimensional landscape with a hierarchy of energy scales, motivated by the string theory, where the energy scale of Kahler moduli is usually assumed to be much lower than that of complex structure moduli and dilaton field. We argue that in such a landscape, the dynamics of slow-roll inflation is governed by the low-energy potential, while the initial condition for inflation are determined by tunneling through high-energy barriers. We then use the scale factor cutoff measure to calculate the probability distribution for the number of inflationary e-folds and the amplitude of density fluctuations $Q$, assuming that the low-energy landscape is described by a random Gaussian potential with a correlation length much smaller than $M_{\rm pl}$. We find that the distribution for $Q$ has a unique shape and a preferred domain, which depends on the parameters of the low-energy landscape. We discuss some observational implications of this distribution and the constraints it imposes on the landscape parameters.