Observational tests of inflation with a field derivative coupling to gravity

Shinji Tsujikawa
2012 Physical Review D  
A field kinetic coupling with the Einstein tensor leads to a gravitationally enhanced friction during inflation, by which even steep potentials with theoretically natural model parameters can drive cosmic acceleration. In the presence of this non-minimal derivative coupling we place observational constraints on a number of representative inflationary models such as chaotic inflation, inflation with exponential potentials, natural inflation, and hybrid inflation. We show that most of the models
more » ... an be made compatible with the current observational data mainly due to the suppressed tensor-to-scalar ratio.
doi:10.1103/physrevd.85.083518 fatcat:guss6n6kejfxppw5lnaqggt3e4