Hunting Down the Best Model of Inflation with Bayesian Evidence

Understand

We present the first calculation of the Bayesian evidence for different prototypical single field inflationary scenarios, including representative classes of small field and large field models.

• This approach allows us to compare inflationary models in a well-defined statistical way and to determine the current "best model of inflation".
• The calculation is performed numerically by interfacing the inflationary code FieldInf with MultiNest.
• We find that small field models are currently preferred, while large field models having a self-interacting potential of power p>4 are strongly disfavoured.