A Walking Dilaton Inflation

TL;DR

This paper proposes a new inflationary model where a composite dilaton from a walking gauge theory acts as the inflaton, naturally leading to small field inflation consistent with Planck 2018 data and predicting light pions as observable signatures.

Contribution

It introduces a novel inflation scenario based on a multi-flavor hidden QCD with a dilaton as the inflaton, constrained by nonperturbative analyses including lattice simulations.

Findings

The dilaton-driven inflation is consistent with cosmological constraints.

The model predicts light pions that could be detected in future experiments.

Reheating temperature is determined by pion decays to electroweak gauge bosons.

Abstract

We propose an inflationary scenario based on a many-flavor hidden QCD with eight flavors, which realizes the almost scale-invariant (walking) gauge dynamics. The theory predicts two types of composite (pseudo) Nambu-Goldstone bosons, the pions and the lightest scalar (dilaton) associated with the spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking and its simultaneous violation of the approximate scale invariance. The dilaton acts as an inflaton, where the inflaton potential is induced by the nonperturbative-scale anomaly linked with the underlying theory. The inflaton potential parameters are highly constrained by the walking nature, which are evaluated by straightforward nonperturbative analyses including lattice simulations. Due to the pseudo Nambu-Goldstone boson's natures and the intrinsic property for the chiral symmetry breaking in the walking gauge dynamics, the inflaton coupled to the pions naturally undergoes the small field inflation consistently with all the cosmological and astrophysical constraints presently placed by Planck 2018 data. When the theory is vector-likely coupled to the standard model in part in a way to realize a dynamical electroweak symmetry breaking, the reheating temperature is determined by the pion decays to electroweak gauge bosons. The proposed inflationary scenario would provide a dynamical origin for the small field inflation as well as the light pions as a smoking-gun to be probed by future experiments.