Troubles for observing the inflaton potential

Abstract

Robustness of the solutions to the inflaton potential inverse problem based on the slow-roll approximation is addressed. With that aim it is introduced a measure of the difference of the outputs obtained using first and second order respectively in the horizon-flow expansion. The evolution of this measure is determined by a second order linear non-autonomous non-homogeneous differential equation. Boundedness of the general solutions to this equation is analyzed. It is shown that they diverge for most of the physically meaningful cases. Examples for typical inflationary models are presented. It is argued that this lack of robustness is due to the limitations of the slow-roll expansion for probing the scale-dependence of the inflationary spectra.