Inflationary scenarios beyond the Standard Model

TL;DR

This paper explores particle-physics models that naturally lead to inflation, linking theoretical features like scale invariance and Goldstone's theorem to inflationary potentials, and discusses how to combine these scenarios for broader models.

Contribution

It provides a pedagogical explanation of how particle physics mechanisms can produce inflation and offers a framework to combine multiple scenarios for more general models.

Findings

Connections between scale invariance and inflationary potentials

Role of Goldstone's theorem in inflation models

Method to combine multiple particle-physics inflation scenarios

Abstract

The aim of this chapter is to explain in clear and pedagogical terms how some particle-physics models and/or mechanisms can naturally lead to inflation and how this can provide testable predictions that can help us find new physics effects. Two well-established features of theoretical particle physics are linked to an essential property of inflation, a naturally-flat inflaton potential: (1) scale invariance, broken by small quantum corrections, and (2) Goldstone's theorem. It is also illustrated how to combine several scenarios of this type to obtain a rather general particle-physics motivated inflationary setup.