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.
