Inflation with a growing fifth dimension
- 1Harvard University
Abstract
A bstract Inflation generally assumes a field with nonzero potential that leads to inflationary expansion happening at arbitrarily early times. We demonstrate potentially observable consequences of inflation with a finite initial time in a model in five-dimensional warped anti-de Sitter space, with both a UV and an IR brane present during inflation. Considering an inflaton with an approximately flat potential localized on the UV brane, we derive the resulting brane motion in the bulk and the 4D effective action describing the dynamics. A concrete model allows us to evaluate possible consequences of a starting point of inflation. The background evolution is driven by the fast roll of the radion at early times and the slow roll of the inflaton at late times. We find that the action has the form of a two-field hyperbolic inflation model, the two fields being the radion and the inflaton, both of which have a time-dependent background solution. This setup is holographically dual to an inflaton coupled to a strongly coupled confining sector in which the ratio of the confinement scale to the 4D Planck scale evolves cosmologically. Focusing on the period when the equation of state becomes that of inflation, we find that the presence of the IR brane leads to deviations from the approximate de Sitter background in addition to those from the slow-roll parameters of the inflaton potential. We quantify the effect of the presence of the IR brane on the two point function of the adiabatic scalar perturbations and tensor perturbations. The dominant deviations occur at large scales: the adiabatic power spectrum has a blue tilt, while the tensor power spectrum shows oscillatory features. We present numerical fits to the shape of the adiabatic power spectrum, and discuss the implications for cosmic microwave background (CMB) analysis.
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BibTeX
@article{mishra2026inflation,
title = {{Inflation with a growing fifth dimension}},
author = {Rashmish K. Mishra and Michael Nee and Lisa Randall},
journal = {Journal of High Energy Physics},
year = {2026},
month = may,
doi = {10.1007/jhep05(2026)169},
url = {https://doi.org/10.1007/jhep05(2026)169},
note = {CC BY},
}
RIS
TY - JOUR
TI - Inflation with a growing fifth dimension
AU - Rashmish K. Mishra
AU - Michael Nee
AU - Lisa Randall
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/05/14
JO - Journal of High Energy Physics
DO - 10.1007/jhep05(2026)169
UR - https://doi.org/10.1007/jhep05(2026)169
AB - A bstract Inflation generally assumes a field with nonzero potential that leads to inflationary expansion happening at arbitrarily early times. We demonstrate potentially observable consequences of inflation with a finite initial time in a model in five-dimensional warped anti-de Sitter space, with both a UV and an IR brane present during inflation. Considering an inflaton with an approximately flat potential localized on the UV brane, we derive the resulting brane motion in the bulk and the 4D effective action describing the dynamics. A concrete model allows us to evaluate possible consequences of a starting point of inflation. The background evolution is driven by the fast roll of the radion at early times and the slow roll of the inflaton at late times. We find that the action has the form of a two-field hyperbolic inflation model, the two fields being the radion and the inflaton, both of which have a time-dependent background solution. This setup is holographically dual to an inflaton coupled to a strongly coupled confining sector in which the ratio of the confinement scale to the 4D Planck scale evolves cosmologically. Focusing on the period when the equation of state becomes that of inflation, we find that the presence of the IR brane leads to deviations from the approximate de Sitter background in addition to those from the slow-roll parameters of the inflaton potential. We quantify the effect of the presence of the IR brane on the two point function of the adiabatic scalar perturbations and tensor perturbations. The dominant deviations occur at large scales: the adiabatic power spectrum has a blue tilt, while the tensor power spectrum shows oscillatory features. We present numerical fits to the shape of the adiabatic power spectrum, and discuss the implications for cosmic microwave background (CMB) analysis.
SN - 1029-8479
SN - 1126-6708
SN - 1127-2236
ER -