Chaplygin inspired Inflation

Abstract

We discuss chaotic inflation in the context of a phenomenological modification of gravity inspired by the Chaplygin gas equation of state. We find that all observationalconstraints can be satisfied provided the Chaplygin scale is smaller than $6.9 \times 10^{-3} M$ and the inflaton mass is smaller than $4.7 \times 10^{-6} M$, respectively, where $M^2\equiv(8 \pi G)^{-1} is the reduced Planck mass.