Coarse-Grained Back Reaction in Single Scalar Field Driven Inflation

Abstract

We introduce a self-consistent stochastic coarse-graining method, which includes both metric and scalar field fluctuations, to investigate the back reaction of long wavelength perturbations in single-scalar driven inflation, up to the second (one loop) order. We demonstrate that, although back reaction cannot be significant during the last 70 e-foldings of inflation with a smooth potential, there exist non-smooth inflaton potentials which allow significant back reaction, and are also consistent with cosmological observations. Such non-smooth potentials may lead to the generation of massive primordial black holes, which could be further used to constrain/verify these models.