Excursion into Quantum Gravity via Inflation

Abstract

The discovery of B-modes, and their effect on the fit to inflationary parameters, opens a window to explore quantum gravity. In this paper we adopt an effective theory approach to study quantum gravity effects in inflation. We apply this approach to chaotic and ${\varphi }^4$ inflation, and find that BICEP2 constrains these new operators to values which are consistent with the effective theory approach. This result opens the possibility to study quantum gravity in a systematic fashion, including its effect on Higgs inflation and other Starobisnky-like models.

Comments: 10 pages, 3 figures