Inflation from a chaotic potential with a step

TL;DR

This paper investigates the effects of a step feature in a chaotic inflation potential on observable parameters, comparing cold and warm inflation scenarios through numerical evolution of perturbations and analyzing their implications for cosmic microwave background observations.

Contribution

It introduces a detailed numerical analysis of a step potential in inflation, contrasting cold and warm inflation effects on perturbations and observable parameters.

Findings

Oscillations in the scalar power spectrum around certain scales.

Warm inflation amplifies perturbations and affects spectral tilt.

Some parameter regions fit Planck 2018 observational constraints.

Abstract

In this work, we study the effects on the relevant observational parameters of an inflationary universe from a chaotic potential with a step. We numerically evolve the perturbation equations within both cold inflation and warm inflation. On the one hand, in a cold inflation scenario we analyse the scalar power spectrum $P_{\mathcal{R}}$ in terms of the number of e-folds $N_{e}$, and in terms of the ratio $k/k_{0}$, where $k_{0}$ is our pivot scale. We show how $P_{\mathcal{R}}$ oscillates around $0.2< k/k_{0} < 20$. Additionally, we present the evolution of two relevant parameters: the scalar spectral index $n_\mathrm{s}$ and the tensor-to-scalar ratio $r$. In fact, more than one region of $(n_\mathrm{s},r)$ lies within the observable window (Planck 2018). On the other hand, in the warm inflationary case, we also examine the evolution of $P_{\mathcal{R}}$ in terms of $N_{e}$ and $k/k_{0}$. Perturbations are amplified in WI; in fact, $P_{\mathcal{R}}$ can be much larger than the CMB value $P_{\mathcal{R}}> 2.22\times 10^{-9}$. This time, the spectral index $n_\mathrm{s}$ is clearly blue-tilted, at smaller scales, and the tensor-to-scalar ratio $r$ becomes too low. However, $n_\mathrm{s}$ can change from blue-tilted towards red-tilted, since $P_{\mathcal{R}}$ starts oscillating around $k/k_{0}\sim 40$. Indeed, the result from the step potential skims the Planck contours. Finally, one key aspect of this research was to contrast the features of an inflationary potential between both paradigms, and, in fact, they show similarities and differences. Due to a featured background and a combined effect of entropy fluctuations (only in warm inflation), in both scenarios certain fluctuation scales are not longer ``freeze in'' on super-horizon scales.