English

Small cosmological constant from a peculiar inflaton potential

High Energy Physics - Phenomenology 2022-10-05 v1 Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology

Abstract

We propose a novel scenario to explain the small cosmological constant (CC) by a finely tuned inflaton potential. The tuned shape is stable under radiative corrections, and our setup is technically natural. The peculiar po- tential approximately satisfies the following conditions: the inflation is eternal if CC is positive, and not eternal if CC is negative. By introducing a slowly varying CC from a positive value to a negative value, the dominant volume of the Universe after the inflation turns out to have a vanishingly small CC. The scenario does not require eternal inflation but the e-folding number is exponentially large and the inflation scale should be low enough. The scenario can have a consistent thermal history, but the present equation of state of the Universe is predicted to differ from the prediction of the {\Lambda}CDM model. A concrete model with a light scalar field is studied.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2108.04246,
  title  = {Small cosmological constant from a peculiar inflaton potential},
  author = {Wen Yin},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2108.04246},
  year   = {2022}
}

Comments

21pages, 3figures;

R2 v1 2026-06-24T04:57:48.974Z