Starobinsky Inflation and the Latest CMB Data: A Subtle Tension?

TL;DR

This paper examines the Starobinsky inflation model's compatibility with recent CMB data, especially considering curvature corrections like an $R^3$ term, and finds that it can still be consistent within certain parameter ranges.

Contribution

The study implements the Starobinsky potential directly into the CLASS code without slow-roll approximation and explores the effects of an $R^3$ correction on its observational viability.

Findings

Pure Starobinsky model is slightly disfavored at 2σ with latest data.

Including an $R^3$ term can improve alignment with observations.

A significant parameter space remains where the model fits current data.

Abstract

We analyze the Starobinsky inflation model and the impact of curvature corrections, particularly a cubic $R^3$ term, to assess their behavior in light of the latest observational results from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT). With the recent sixth data release (DR6), the scalar spectral index was measured to be $n_s=0.9743 \pm 0.0034$, which appears to exclude the pure Starobinsky model at approximately the $2\sigma$ level. In this paper, we implement the Starobinsky inflationary potential directly into the CLASS code, without relying on the slow-roll approximation, and we constrain the number of e-folds of inflation $N_k$ using a theoretically motivated range derived from reheating considerations and standard couplings between matter fields and gravity. We show that it is still possible to identify a significant region of parameter space where the Starobinsky model remains highly consistent with the latest observational data. While the pure Starobinsky model remains a compelling candidate for cosmic inflation, we explore how including a cubic $R^3$ term can shift its predictions to better align with the Planck and ACT measurements.