A shallow local minimum added to a hilltop inflation potential can make the typical number of e-folds as large as 10^(10^10), enough for light scalars to reach Bunch-Davies equilibrium.
Tunneling in Stochastic Inflation
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abstract
The relative probability to decay towards different vacua during inflation is studied. The calculation is performed in single-field slow-roll potentials using the stochastic inflation formalism. Various situations are investigated, including falling from a local maximum of the potential and escaping from a local minimum. In the latter case, our result is consistent with that of Hawking and Moss, but is applicable to any potential. The decay rates are also computed, and the case of a generic potential with multiple minima and maxima is discussed.
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hep-ph 1years
2019 1verdicts
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Stochastic inflation with an extremely large number of $e$-folds
A shallow local minimum added to a hilltop inflation potential can make the typical number of e-folds as large as 10^(10^10), enough for light scalars to reach Bunch-Davies equilibrium.