Emergence of inflaton potential from asymptotically safe gravity

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates how cosmological inflation can naturally emerge from asymptotically safe gravity within scalar-tensor models, linking quantum gravity fixed points to observable inflationary parameters.

Contribution

It shows that inflationary potentials can arise from RG flow in asymptotically safe gravity, providing a connection between UV fixed points and observable cosmology.

Findings

Inflationary potentials emerge from RG flow equations.

Predicted inflation parameters align with observations.

Initial inflaton field value is derived from RG evolution.

Abstract

The Asymptotic Safety Hypothesis for gravity relies on the existence of an interacting fixed point of the Wilsonian renormalization group flow, which controls the microscopic dynamics, and provides a UV completion of the theory. Connecting such UV completion to observable physics has become an active area of research in the last decades. In this work we show such connection within the framework of scalar-tensor models. More specifically, we found that cosmological inflation naturally emerges from the integration of the RG flow equations, and that the predicted parameters of the emergent effective potentials provide a slow-roll model of inflation compatible with current observations. Furthermore, the RG evolution of the effective action starting at the UV fixed point, provides a prediction for the initial value of the inflaton field.