Constraining scalar-Gauss-Bonnet inflation by reheating, unitarity, and Planck data

Abstract

We revisit the inflationary dynamics in detail for theories with Gauss-Bonnet gravity coupled to scalar functions, in light of the Planck data. Considering the chaotic inflationary scenario, we constrain the parameters of two models involving inflaton-Gauss-Bonnet coupling by current Planck data. For nonzero inflaton-Gauss-Bonnet coupling β , an inflationary analysis provides us a big cosmologically viable region in the space of (m , β ), where m is the mass of the inflaton. However, we study further on constraining β arising from reheating considerations and unitarity of tree-level amplitude involving 2-graviton →2 -graviton (h h →h h ) scattering. Our analysis, particularly on reheating significantly reduces the parameter space of (m , β ) for all models. The quadratic Gauss-Bonnet coupling parameter turns out to be more strongly constrained than that of the linear coupling. For the linear Gauss-Bonnet coupling function, we obtain β ≲1 0³, with the condition β (m /M_P)²≃10^-4. However, the study of the Higgs inflation scenario in the presence of a Gauss-Bonnet term turns out to be completely disfavored.