Informal Pizza Seminar

A graceful exit for Old Inflation and a solution to the Hierarchy Problem

Alessio Notari

McGill

We show that Inflation in a False Vacuum becomes viable in the presence of a scalar field coupled to the Ricci scalar. The field is unstable in this background, it grows and slows down the de Sitter phase, allowing then fast tunneling to a true vacuum. Graceful exit and a flat spectrum of cosmological perturbations are obtained. As a by-product this field also sets dynamically the value of M_Planck observed today, and it provides a new solution to the Hierarchy Problem. Moreover we predict a spectrum of gravity waves peaked at around 0.1 mHz, that will be detectable by the planned space inteferometer LISA.