Reconstruction of k-essence inflation in Horndeski gravity

Abstract

In this paper, we analyzed inflation from k-essence in the framework of Horndeski gravity. In the specific, we considered models of canonical scalar field and k-essence with quadratic kinetic term. Viable inflationary models can be reconstructed by starting from the cosmological data. Several possibilities are explored in order to correctly reproduce the spectral index and the tensor-to-scalar ratio of primordial cosmological perturbations.