Studies on modified power law inflation

Abstract

We study power law inflation (PLI) with a monomial potential and find a novel exact solution. It is well known that conventional PLI with exponential potential is inconsistent with the Planck data. Unlike the standard PLI, present model does not suffer from graceful exit problem and it agrees fairly well with recent observations. We have calculated the spectral index and the tensor-to-scalar ratio which are in very good agreement with recent observational data and also comparable with other modified inflationary models. A technique has been used which shows that the large cosmological constant reduces with expansion of the Universe in case of the power law inflation. The coupling of the inflaton with gravitation is the main point in this technique. The basic assumption here is that the two metric tensors in the gravitational and the inflaton parts correspond to different conformal frames which is in contradiction with the conventional power law inflation where the inflaton directly coupled with the background metric tensor. This fact has direct application to different dark energy models and assisted quintessence theory.