Quantcast
  • Register
PhysicsOverflow is a next-generation academic platform for physicists and astronomers, including a community peer review system and a postgraduate-level discussion forum analogous to MathOverflow.

Welcome to PhysicsOverflow! PhysicsOverflow is an open platform for community peer review and graduate-level Physics discussion.

Please help promote PhysicsOverflow ads elsewhere if you like it.

News

PO is now at the Physics Department of Bielefeld University!

New printer friendly PO pages!

Migration to Bielefeld University was successful!

Please vote for this year's PhysicsOverflow ads!

Please do help out in categorising submissions. Submit a paper to PhysicsOverflow!

... see more

Tools for paper authors

Submit paper
Claim Paper Authorship

Tools for SE users

Search User
Reclaim SE Account
Request Account Merger
Nativise imported posts
Claim post (deleted users)
Import SE post

Users whose questions have been imported from Physics Stack Exchange, Theoretical Physics Stack Exchange, or any other Stack Exchange site are kindly requested to reclaim their account and not to register as a new user.

Public \(\beta\) tools

Report a bug with a feature
Request a new functionality
404 page design
Send feedback

Attributions

(propose a free ad)

Site Statistics

205 submissions , 163 unreviewed
5,082 questions , 2,232 unanswered
5,354 answers , 22,789 comments
1,470 users with positive rep
820 active unimported users
More ...

  Starobinsky inflation and Supergravity

+ 3 like - 0 dislike
1604 views

I may not be aware of the very latest developments, but as far as I see, after a little BICEP2 hickup, the Starobinsky model of cosmic inflation (or the class of these models) is rather preferred by observational data. Is that (still) right?

It's curious, because several arguments (as behind the above link) seem to suggest  that Starobinsky inflation goes rather well along with supergravity and low energy supersymmetry breaking. 

This here is a vague question, just out of interest, sorry. I am wondering if any expert seeing this here might enjoy providing an update on the status of the models, particularly with respect to embedding into supergravity and superstring models.

asked Jan 20, 2015 in Phenomenology by Urs Schreiber (6,095 points) [ no revision ]
It is not clear who is right regarding Bicep2 data. The claims of error are political, and one should wait until a replication, results from Bicep2 in a different patch of sky, and also the Planck data, all agree with each other, with no dissenting opinion. Until that point, it is premature to reject the data of the Bicep folks because competitors say they missed a background which Bicep claims is irrelevent. It is possibly irrelevant, and possibly relevant, only a replication can tell. I don't know the status of Starobinski inflation given the new data, I just wanted to make sure that you are fair to everyone.
What I meant to express with the reference to BICEP2  -- but clearly didn't do well, for which I apologize -- is that while there was much excitement about the implications of the BICEP2 claim for fundamental physics, it is striking -- isn't it --  that the consequences of the Planck data without the BICEP2 claim are at least as exciting, if not more so. For some reason this receives much less attention, and hence my question as to what may be said here.. Namely, the Planck data drastically favors the Starobinsky model for inflation (it sits right there in the middle of Planck's preferred parameter range) and various arguments, that I tried to link to above, say that this model, in turn, favors supergravity. That seems remarkable. A hint for a primordial gravitational wave is neat, but we entirely expect such waves to be there. A real hint for supergravity however goes in the direction of actual new physics. Now of course it all depends on how much may really be inferred from the model. That's why I asked here, hoping that some expert might see this and give us an overview of the state of the Starobinsky art with respect to supergravity.

Update: the new joint BICEP/Planck data as well as the Planck 2015 data is out, and they confirm the Planck results from 2013: the model of inflation strongly preferred by the data is Starobinsky inflation.

Also the analysis by Dalianis-Farakos just came out arXiv:1502.01246. They argue that embedding the Starobinsky model into supergravity solves its remaining problem: the size of initial homogenous patch.

Your answer

Please use answers only to (at least partly) answer questions. To comment, discuss, or ask for clarification, leave a comment instead.
To mask links under text, please type your text, highlight it, and click the "link" button. You can then enter your link URL.
Please consult the FAQ for as to how to format your post.
This is the answer box; if you want to write a comment instead, please use the 'add comment' button.
Live preview (may slow down editor)   Preview
Your name to display (optional):
Privacy: Your email address will only be used for sending these notifications.
Anti-spam verification:
If you are a human please identify the position of the character covered by the symbol $\varnothing$ in the following word:
p$\hbar$ysicsOverflo$\varnothing$
Then drag the red bullet below over the corresponding character of our banner. When you drop it there, the bullet changes to green (on slow internet connections after a few seconds).
Please complete the anti-spam verification




user contributions licensed under cc by-sa 3.0 with attribution required

Your rights
...