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Non-minimally coupled loop quantum inflation with inverse-volume corrections

  • Universidad de Tarapacá
  • Pontificia Universidad Católica de Valparaíso
  • University of Naples Federico II
  • National Institute for Nuclear Physics
  • Scuola Superiore Meridionale

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

We study slow-roll inflation driven by a scalar field non-minimally coupled to gravity within the effective framework of Loop Quantum Cosmology (LQC), including inverse-volume corrections. We consider two physically motivated classes of potentials, a Higgs-like quartic potential V ∝ ϕ 4 and string-inspired fractional monomial potentials V ∝ ϕp with p ' 1. Working at first order in the slow-roll expansion, we derive analytic expressions for the inflationary observables, namely the scalar spectral index ns , the tensor-to-scalar ratio r , and the running αs ≡ dns / d ln k , and then solve the corrected background dynamics numerically to obtain quantitative predictions. Confronting these results with current observational constraints from Planck 2018 and ACT DR6, we find that the model can lie within the allowed region of the (ns, r, αs) parameter space, including a mild preference for slightly larger ns , as suggested by recent ground-based measurements. We also compute the probability of achieving sufficient slow-roll inflation in this setting. Although effective LQC replaces the initial singularity with a nonsingular quantum bounce, the likelihood of a sufficiently long inflationary phase depends on the pre-inflationary dynamics and the inflaton potential. Using the canonical Liouville measure on the effective phase space, we determine the fraction of post-bounce trajectories that yield sufficient inflation and find that the non-minimal coupling parameter ξ substantially enlarges the phase-space volume of favorable initial conditions relative to the minimally coupled case, exhibiting an attractor-like enhancement that saturates at large ξ .

Original languageEnglish
Article number117530
JournalNuclear Physics B
Volume1029
DOIs
StatePublished - Aug 2026

Keywords

  • Inflation
  • Loop quantum cosmology
  • Very early universe

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