Inflationary Dynamics with a Smooth Slow-Roll to Constant-Roll Era Transition

Understand

In this paper we investigate the implications of having a varying second slow-roll index on the canonical scalar field inflationary dynamics.

• We shall be interested in cases that the second slow-roll can take small values and correspondingly large values, for limiting cases of the function that quantifies the variation of the second slow-roll index.
• As we demonstrate, this can naturally introduce a smooth transition between slow-roll and constant-roll eras.
• We discuss the theoretical implications of the mechanism we introduce and we use various illustrative examples in order to better understand the new features that the varying second slow-roll index introduces.