Affleck-Dine inflation
James M. Cline, Matteo Puel, Takashi Toma
Abstract
The Affleck-Dine mechanism in its simplest form provides baryogenesis from the out-of-equilibrium evolution of a complex scalar field with a simple renormalizable potential. We show that such a model supplemented by nonminimal coupling to gravity can also provide inflation, consistent with Planck constraints, simultaneously with the generation of the baryon asymmetry. The predictions of the model include significant tensor-to-scalar ratio and possibly baryon isocurvature fluctuations. The reheating temperature is calculable, making the model fully predictive. We require color triplet scalars for reheating and transferring the primordial baryon asymmetry to quarks; these could be observable at colliders. They can also be probed at higher scales by searches for quark compositeness in dijet angular distributions, and flavor-changing neutral current effects.