Large scale power and running spectral index in New Old Inflation

Abstract

We have proposed a new class of inflationary scenarios in which the first stage of expansion is driven by "old" false vacuum inflation. This ends by nucleation of a bubble, which then further inflates. Unlike the standard slow-roll scenarios the "clock" ending the second inflationary phase is not a local order parameter, but rather the average value of an oscillating scalar field, which locks the system at a saddle point of the potential in a temporary inflationary state. Inflation ends when the amplitude drops below a certain critical point and liberates the system from the false vacuum state. The second stage of inflation has only about 50 e-foldings, a number which is determined entirely by the ratio of the fundamental mass scales, such as the Planck/string scale and the supersymmetry breaking scale. The density perturbations are generated due to fluctuations of moduli-dependent Yukawa couplings. In this note we explore the observable imprints in the fluctuation spectrum of generic cross-couplings in the superpotential and in the Kahler potential. We show that in the presence of generic non-renormalizable interactions in the superpotential between the fluctuating modulus and the oscillating inflaton, the amplitude of the density perturbations is exponentially cut-off for sufficiently large wavelengths. With reasonable choices of scales and interactions, this long wavelength cutoff can occur at approximately the current horizon size. The perturbative corrections in the Kähler potential give non-trivial potentially observable tilt and a running of the spectral index which is different from the standard inflationary models.