Toward evading the strong coupling problem in Horndeski genesis

Abstract

It is of interest to understand whether or not one can construct a classical field theory description of early cosmology which would be free of the initial singularity and stable throughout the whole evolution. One of the known possibilities is genesis within the Horndeski theory, which is thought to be an alternative to or a possible completion of the inflationary scenario. In this model, the strong coupling energy scale tends to zero in the asymptotic past, $t \to - \infty$, making the model potentially intractable. We point out that despite the latter property, the classical setup may be trustworthy since the energy scale of the classical evolution (the inverse of its timescale) also vanishes as $t \to -\infty$. In the framework of a concrete model belonging to the Horndeski class, we show that the strong coupling energy scale of the cubic interactions vastly exceeds the classical energy scale in a certain range of parameters, indicating that the classical description is possible.