Constraining chameleon field driven warm inflation with Planck 2018 data

Understand

We investigate warm inflationary scenario in which the accelerated expansion of the early Universe is driven by chameleon-like scalar fields.

• Due to the non-minimal coupling between the scalar field and the matter sector, the energy-momentum tensor of each fluid component is not conserved anymore, and the generalized balance equation is obtained.
• The new source term in the energy equation can be used to model warm inflation.
• On the other hand, if the coupling function varies slowly, the model reduces to the standard model used for the description of cold inflation.