Inflation in simple one-loop effective potentials of perturbative quantum gravity

Abstract

We study inflation in scalar–tensor perturbative quantum gravity driven by a one-loop effective potential. We consider effective potentials generated by three models. The first model describes a single scalar field with a nonvanishing mass. The second model describes a massless scalar field with nonminimal coupling to the Einstein tensor. The third model generalizes the Coleman–Weinberg model for the gravitational case. The first model can be consistent with the observational data for [Formula: see text] e-foldings. The second model can be consistent with the observational data for [Formula: see text] e-foldings. We did not find parameters that make the generalized Coleman–Weinberg model consistent with the observational data. We discuss the implications of these results and ways to improve them with other terms of effective action.