Modeling Quantum Gravity Effects in Inflation

Understand

Cosmological models in 1+1 dimensions are an ideal setting for investigating the quantum structure of inflationary dynamics -- gravity is renormalizable, while there is room for spatial structure not present in the minisuperspace approximation.

• We use this fortuitous convergence to investigate the mechanism of slow-roll eternal inflation.
• A variant of 1+1 Liouville gravity coupled to matter is shown to model precisely the scalar sector of cosmological perturbations in 3+1 dimensions.
• A particular example of quintessence in 1+1d is argued on the one hand to exhibit slow-roll eternal inflation according to standard criteria; on the other hand, a field redefinition relates the model to pure de Sitter gravity coupled to a free scalar matter field with no potential.