Flattening the Inflaton's Potential with Quantum Corrections

Abstract

I show that a classical scalar potential with $ V''/V \sim 1 $ can be sufficiently flattened by quantum corrections to give rise to slow-roll inflation. This provides perhaps the simplest way to generate an inflationary potential without fine tuning. The most natural implementation of this idea produces an unviably small spectral index, but, for example, $ n \sim 0.8 $ can be obtained in other implementations.