Distinguishing between inflationary models from cosmic microwave background

Abstract

In this paper, inflationary cosmology is reviewed, paying particular attention to its observational signatures associated with large-scale density perturbations generated from quantum fluctuations. In the most general scalar-tensor theories with second-order equations of motion, we derive the scalar spectral index $n_s$, the tensor-to-scalar ratio $r$, and the nonlinear estimator $f_{\rm NL}$ of primordial non-Gaussianities to confront models with observations of Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) temperature anisotropies. Our analysis includes models such as potential-driven slow-roll inflation, k-inflation, Starobinsky inflation, and Higgs inflation with non-minimal/derivative/Galileon couplings. We constrain a host of inflationary models by using the Planck data combined with other measurements to find models most favored observationally in the current literature. We also study anisotropic inflation based on a scalar coupling with a vector (or, two-form) field and discuss its observational signatures appearing in the two-point and three-point correlation functions of scalar and tensor perturbations.