Dynamics of tachyon fields and inflation - comparison of analytical and numerical results with observation

Abstract

The role tachyon fields may play in evolution of early universe is discussed in this paper. We consider the evolution of a flat and homogeneous universe governed by a tachyon scalar field with the DBI-type action and calculate the slow-roll parameters of inflation, scalar spectral index (n), and tensor-scalar ratio (r) for the given potentials. We pay special attention to the inverse power potential, first of all to V (x) ~ x?4, and compare the available results obtained by analytical and numerical methods with those obtained by observation. It is shown that the computed values of the observational parameters and the observed ones are in a good agreement for the high values of the constant X0. The possibility that influence of the radion field can extend a range of the acceptable values of the constant X0 to the string theory motivated sector of its values is briefly considered.