Comments on the Starobinsky Model of Inflation and its Descendants

Abstract

We point out that the ability of some models of inflation, such as Higgs inflation and the universal attractor models, in reproducing the available data is due to their relation to the Starobinsky model of inflation. For large field values, where the inflationary phase takes place, all these classes of models are indeed identical to the Starobinsky model. Nevertheless, the inflaton is just an auxiliary field in the Jordan frame of the Starobinsky model and this leads to two important consequences: first, the inflationary predictions of the Starobinsky model and its descendants are slightly different (albeit not measurably); secondly the theories have different small-field behaviour, leading to different ultra-violet cut-off scales. In particular, one interesting descendant of the Starobinsky model is the non-minimally- coupled quadratic chaotic inflation. Although the standard quadratic chaotic inflation is ruled out by the recent Planck data, its non-minimally coupled version is in agreement with observational data and valid up to Planckian scales.