Testing Inflation: A Bootstrap Approach
Astrophysics
2010-12-28 v2 General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
High Energy Physics - Phenomenology
High Energy Physics - Theory
Abstract
We note that the essential idea of inflation, that the universe underwent a brief period of accelerated expansion followed by a long period of decelerated expansion, can be encapsulated in a "closure condition" which relates the amount of accelerated expansion during inflation to the amount of decelerated expansion afterward. We present a protocol for systematically testing the validity of this condition observationally.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.0810.2787,
title = {Testing Inflation: A Bootstrap Approach},
author = {Latham Boyle and Paul J. Steinhardt},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0810.2787},
year = {2010}
}
Comments
4 pages, 2 figures, matches Phys. Rev. Lett. version