Gauge inflation by kinetic coupled gravity

Abstract

Recently, a new class of inflationary models, so-called gauge-flation or non-Abelian gauge field inflation has been introduced where the slow-roll inflation is driven by a non-Abelian gauge field A with the field strength F. This class of models are based on a gauge field theory having F2 and F4 terms with a non-Abelian gauge group minimally coupled to gravity. Here, we present a new class of such inflationary models based on a gauge field theory having only F2 term with non-Abelian gauge fields non-minimally coupled to gravity. The non-minimal coupling is set up by introducing the Einstein tensor besides the metric tensor within the F2 term, which is called kinetic coupled gravity. A perturbation analysis is performed to confront the inflation under consideration with Planck and BICEP2 results