Hints at Universality from Inflection Point Inflation

by Sean Downes (Texas A&M)

Tuesday Jan 8, 2013, 3:00 PM → 4:00 PM Pacific/Honolulu

417 (Watanabe)

Embedding Inflation into larger models of particle physics or string
theory has proven difficult. The wealth of new cosmological data
expected in the short-term motivate a better understanding of how such
ideas work together. We report on work showing that small-field models
of inflation embed in a systematic way. Through examples, we discuss
how these systematics give rise to scaling relations between physical
quantities, particularly the scales of inflation and SUSY breaking. We
review how such scaling can also impact the attractor properties of
inflationary dynamics and anomalies in the power spectrum.