Testing an inflationary era in curvature–matter coupling gravity

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate the cosmological inflation in the context of a minimal matter–geometry coupling, which is based on the [Formula: see text] gravity theory, where [Formula: see text] is a generic function of the curvature scalar [Formula: see text] and the trace [Formula: see text] of the energy–momentum tensor. Assuming that the slow-roll inflation conditions hold true in [Formula: see text] gravity, we obtain the various inflation-related observables such as the tensor-to-scalar ratio [Formula: see text], the scalar spectral index [Formula: see text], the running [Formula: see text] of the spectral index and the tensor spectral [Formula: see text] for two specific [Formula: see text] models from the Hubble slow-roll parameters. To observe the viability of these models, a numerical analysis of such parameters has been done. The results showed that, by using the various values of free parameters, it is possible to obtain a viable compatible with the observational data.