Theory HEP Seminar

Chameleons in the early universe

Renato Costa

University of Cape Town & McGill

We investigate the possibility that the inflaton, in particular in conformal inflation models, is also a chameleon, i.e. that it couples to the energy density of some heavy nonrelativistic matter present during inflation. We find new and interesting attractor behaviours, either prolonging inflation, or changing the observables n_s,r, depending on the sign of the chameleon coupling exponent.