Sep 7 – 11, 2015
Warsaw, Poland
Europe/Zurich timezone

Stabilizing the Planck mass shortly after inflation

Sep 9, 2015, 9:40 AM
20m
Rm 111+112

Rm 111+112

Speaker

Adam Christopherson (University of Florida, United States)

Description

In this talk, I will present recent work focusing on a model of inflation embedded in a scalar-tensor theory. This model contains two fields, one that drives inflation, and a second that stabilizes the Planck mass (or the gravitational constant) in the early universe. In this model, the stabilization occurs a few efolds after inflation. We show, by performing a numerical calculation, that the non-minimal coupling of the second field to the Ricci scalar can boost the amplitude of the curvature perturbation, even if the Planck mass varies only a small amount.

Presentation materials