Conformal Frame Dependence of Inflation

Abstract

Physical equivalence between different conformal frames in scalar-tensor theory of gravity is a known fact. However, assuming that matter minimally couples to the metric of a particular frame, which we call the matter Jordan frame, the matter point of view of the universe may vary from frame to frame. Thus, there is a clear distinction between gravitational sector (curvature and scalar field) and matter sector. In this paper, focusing on a simple power-law inflation model in the Einstein frame, two examples are considered, a super-inflationary and a bouncing universe Jordan frames. Then we consider a spectator curvaton minimally coupled to a Jordan frame, and compute its contribution to the curvature perturbation power spectrum. In these specific examples, we find a blue tilt at short scales for the super-inflationary case, and a blue tilt at large scales for the bouncing case.

Publication
Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics
Avatar
Guillem Domènech
Researcher in gravity and cosmology

I am an Emmy Noether Research Group Leader at the Insitute for Theoretical Physics at the Leibniz University Hannover. My research focuses in various aspects of cosmology, gravity and particle physics.