Tufts/CfA/MIT Cosmology Seminar, at Tufts:

Tuesday, April 18, 2000
2:30 pm
Robinson Hall, Room 250
Refreshments at 2:00 in Knipp Library, Room 251

"Flattening the Inflaton's Potential with Discrete Non-abelian Gauge Symmetries"


Joanne Cohn
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics

Abstract:

Obtaining a potential flat enough to produce slow roll inflation is often difficult when gravitational effects are included. After briefly introducing this issue, I will discuss one way to guarantee the necessary flatness in the inflaton potential, using non-abelian discrete gauge symmetries in a low energy effective field theory. This mechanism also provides for a hybrid or mutated hybrid ending to inflation. A few implementations of this mechanism which satisfy the constraints on inflationary models will be described briefly.