Cosmological perturbations from braneworld inflation with a Gauss-Bonnet term

Abstract

Braneworld inflation is a phenomenology related to string theory that describes high-energy modifications to general relativistic inflation. The observable universe is a brane embedded in 5-dimensional anti de Sitter spacetime. When the 5-dimensional action is Einstein-Hilbert, we have a Randall-Sundrum type braneworld. The amplitude of tensor and scalar perturbations from inflation is strongly increased relative to the standard results, although the ratio of tensor to scalar amplitudes still obeys the standard consistency relation. If a Gauss-Bonnet term is included in the action, as a high-energy correction motivated by string theory, we show that there are important changes to the Randall-Sundrum case. We give an exact analysis of the tensor perturbations. They satisfy the same wave equation and have the same spectrum as in the Randall-Sundrum case, but the Gauss-Bonnet change to the junction conditions leads to a modified amplitude of gravitational waves. The amplitude is no longer monotonically increasing with energy scale, but decreases asymptotically after an initial rise above the standard level. Using an approximation that neglects bulk effects, we show that the amplitude of scalar perturbations has a qualitatively similar behavior to the tensor amplitude. In addition, the tensor to scalar ratio breaks the standard consistency relation.