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Phys. Rev. D 66, 083508 (2002) [10 pages]

Inflation: Flow, fixed points, and observables to arbitrary order in slow roll

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William H. Kinney*
Institute for Strings, Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics, Columbia University, 550 West 120th Street, New York, New York 10027

Received 3 July 2002; published 18 October 2002

I generalize the inflationary flow equations of Hoffman and Turner to arbitrary order in slow roll. This makes it possible to study the predictions of slow roll inflation in the full observable parameter space of the tensor/scalar ratio r, spectral index n, and running dn/dlnk. It also becomes possible to identify exact fixed points in the parameter flow. I numerically evaluate the flow equations to fifth order in slow roll for a set of randomly chosen initial conditions and find that the models cluster strongly in the observable parameter space, indicating a “generic” set of predictions for slow roll inflation. I comment briefly on the interesting proposed correspondence between flow in inflationary parameter space and renormalization group flow in a boundary conformal field theory.

© 2002 The American Physical Society

URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevD.66.083508
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevD.66.083508
PACS:
98.80.Cq

*Electronic address: kinney@physics.columbia.edu