Inflation in general covariant theory of gravity

Abstract

In this paper, we study inflation in the framework of the nonrelativistic general covariant theory of the Hořava-Lifshitz gravity with the projectability condition and an arbitrary coupling constant λ. We find that the Friedmann-Robterson-Walker (FRW) universe is necessarily flat in such a setup. We work out explicitly the linear perturbations of the flat FRW universe without specifying to a particular gauge, and find that the perturbations are different from those obtained in general relativity, because of the presence of the high-order spatial derivative terms. Applying the general formulas to a single scalar field, we show that in the sub-horizon regions, the metric and scalar field are tightly coupled and have the same oscillating frequencies. In the super-horizon regions, the perturbations become adiabatic, and the comoving curvature perturbation is constant. We also calculate the power spectra and indices of both the scalar and tensor perturbations, and express them explicitly in terms of the slow roll parameters and the coupling constants of the high-order spatial derivative terms. In particular, we find that the perturbations, of both scalar and tensor, are almost scale-invariant, and, with some reasonable assumptions on the coupling coefficients, the spectrum index of the tensor perturbation is the same as that given in the minimum scenario in general relativity (GR), whereas the index for scalar perturbation in general depends on λ and is different from the standard GR value. The ratio of the scalar and tensor power spectra depends on the high-order spatial derivative terms, and can be different from that of GR significantly.