Excursion into Quantum Gravity via Inflation

Understand

The discovery of B-modes, and their effect on the fit to inflationary parameters, opens a window to explore quantum gravity.

• In this paper we adopt an effective theory approach to study quantum gravity effects in inflation.
• We apply this approach to chaotic and $\phi^4$ inflation, and find that BICEP2 constrains these new operators to values which are consistent with the effective theory approach.
• This result opens the possibility to study quantum gravity in a systematic fashion, including its effect on Higgs inflation and other Starobisnky-like models.