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Desensitizing inflation from the Planck scale

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Abstract

A new mechanism to control Planck-scale corrections to the inflationary eta parameter is proposed. A common approach to the eta problem is to impose a shift symmetry on the inflaton field. However, this symmetry has to remain unbroken by Planck-scale effects, which is a rather strong requirement on possible ultraviolet completions of the theory. In this paper, we show that the breaking of the shift symmetry by Planck-scale corrections can be systematically suppressed if the inflaton field interacts with a conformal sector. The inflaton then receives an anomalous dimension in the conformal field theory, which leads to sequestering of all dangerous high-energy corrections. We analyze a number of models where the mechanism can be seen in action. In our most detailed example we compute the exact anomalous dimensions via a-maximization and show that the eta problem can be solved using only weakly-coupled physics.

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  1. School of Natural Sciences, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, NJ, 08540, U.S.A.

    Daniel Baumann & Daniel Green

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  1. Daniel Baumann
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Baumann, D., Green, D. Desensitizing inflation from the Planck scale. J. High Energ. Phys. 2010, 57 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/JHEP09(2010)057

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