Cosmic inflation from broken conformal symmetry

TL;DR

This paper proposes a novel origin of cosmic inflation from Palatini quadratic gravity, where breaking local conformal symmetry via matter fields leads to an inflationary phase with an asymptotically flat potential.

Contribution

It introduces a new mechanism linking Palatini quadratic gravity and broken conformal symmetry to generate inflationary dynamics.

Findings

Inflation can emerge from Palatini quadratic gravity with matter-induced symmetry breaking.

The model naturally produces an asymptotically flat potential suitable for slow-roll inflation.

The approach offers a new perspective on the origin of inflationary conditions.

Abstract

A period of rapidly accelerating expansion is expected in the early Universe implemented by a scalar field slowly rolling down along an asymptotically flat potential preferred by the current data. In this paper, we point out that this picture of the cosmic inflation with an asymptotically flat potential could emerge from the Palatini quadratic gravity by adding the matter field in such a way to break the local gauged conformal symmetry in both kinetic and potential terms.