Talk:Inflaton

Edited for clarity
The original article discussed the concept in terms of an inflaton field. Cantus' rewrite of the first sentence makes it much clearer but a reader might be confused by the use of "particle". True, a particle is associated with the field but it reads as though one particle is responsible for the inflationary epoch. Here's a reference that discusses the topic in terms of a scalar field:

http://nedwww.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/Kolb/Kolb3.html

I've made some changes to try to make the article easier to grasp. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Vivers (talk • contribs) 22:41, 19 July 2004 (UTC)

Citation needed for expansion figures
Can you reference a source for the 10-50 m to 1 m expansion figures? My research shows an expansion from 10-24 to 1026. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Sgb (talk • contribs) 05:16, 13 September 2005 (UTC)
 * The figure does seem a little low for inflation. 219.88.76.119 00:52, 30 June 2007 (UTC)

William Dembski?
He isn't a physicist. His views on the subject aren't relevant. And even if they were relevant, this particular view has nothing do do with the inflaton scalar field or cosmology. — Preceding unsigned comment added by C h fleming (talk • contribs) 12:26, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

Edits by User:Bhenderson
A new user continues to make edits to this page that are slightly problematic. The prose he includes doesn't add any substantive information to the article and introduce a misconcpetion that inflation accounts for the current scale of the universe (which it doesn't because expansion is still occuring). --ScienceApologist 15:58, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

Inflaton vs inflation
This is already been fleetingly discussed: I agree that a casual reader might think the spelling is wrong, and perhaps might change it. But I also think that a sentence like "...is not missing an 'i' etc." is slightly patronising, and has not a tone appropriate for an encyclopedia. We might perhaps put a warning in a comment within the article source? Happy editing, Goochelaar  (talk) 10:12, 12 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I suggest the controversial paragraph be rewritten to read as follows: Inflaton conforms to the convention for field names, and joins such terms as photon and gluon. The process is "inflation"; the particle is the "inflaton". PYRRHON  talk   18:35, 12 May 2010 (UTC)
 * How does that stop drive by editors from "correcting" the spelling? --Michael C. Price talk 23:10, 12 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Michael, I share your concern about what drive-by editors may do. My hope is that putting photon and gluon close to inflaton, and then showing that inflation is one thing, and an inflaton is something else, will be enough of a clue to the average editor not to alter the spelling of inflaton. Of course, some editors will be clueless no matter how painstaking we are in separating the two terms. My hope in that regard is that algeny will come to our rescue soon. PYRRHON  talk   03:08, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I agree with Pyrrhon and with Pyrrhon's proposal: if the two words appear in the same sentence, stressing their structure and meaning, the risk of misunderstanding is sensibly reduced. Goochelaar  (talk) 16:26, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Per WP:TwoHeadsAreBetterThanOneIfThoseHeadsAreGoochelaarandPyrrhon, I have amended the article as I proposed above. Thank you to all the participants here for your erudite discussion, your extraordinary civility, and your excellent spelling. PYRRHON   talk   02:51, 15 May 2010 (UTC)

Is the inflaton a dark energy candidate? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 62.198.103.144 (talk) 09:41, 6 July 2010 (UTC)
 * I had the same question, but I came across statements here, stating that the energy scales are different. I don't guess that resolves the issue, but suggests that more explanation would be necessary if they were in fact manifestations of the same process.  70.247.169.197 (talk) 07:14, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

The question on a connection between inflation (the inflaton field) and dark energy might be worth re-considering: The essentials of the process are identical, the specific energies of the inflation within the Big Bang and the cosmic voids appear to be constant (same amount per volume). Brian Greene expands a little more on the subject (see "The Fabric of the Cosmos"), and I've just written an email in a similar direction of thought. However, the magnitude for the original size (10E-50m) at the beginning of inflation is way below the Planck world (10E-35m). Maintaining this very unusual value surely implies quoting a source?! Regards, casey-san, Germany80.132.252.226 (talk) 07:10, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

As a supplement to my contribution yesterday, there are two sources (publications) on the inflation which might be useful (besides Brian Greene's "Fabric of the Cosmos"). One is a lecture on dark matter and Einstein's cosmological constant held by Prof. Dr. Hanns Ruder, then University of Tübingen, who explained that within the first 10E-30 seconds of the Big Bang, the universe expanded by a factor of 10E50. The other publication remains a bit vague, but the chapter about the Big Bang on the DVD "Our Universe" (Discovery Channel) also states a faster-than-light expansion from the size of an atom to that of a golfball in a similarly short timeframe: Prof. Lawrence Krauss: Expansion of 10E24 times within 10E-24 seconds. A closer look at both presentations reveals not just a slight factoring of the speed of light, but a mind-boggling amount of some 10E20 times that speed, depending on the original values you assume at the starting point! Regards, casey-san, Germany87.184.37.210 (talk) 12:40, 2 September 2012 (UTC)

about e-folds and time.

 * http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/7326/on-flatness-problem-inflation-etc
 * http://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/10063/inflation-factor-and-doubling-time

Yoron 02:36, 7 July 2011 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.35.21.217 (talk)

Properties of such an "inflaton"?
Coming here I had a strong feeling of beeing looking at some "usual" kind of fringe theory; however this seems to be just a far-from-mainstream really-really-far-from-being-accepted nevertheless a somewhat scientific theory. But I think that anyone taking seriously the existence of such an inflaton could devote at least a little time to explain its properties, say, some kind of quantum numbers ;) Could anyone explain? PS: A few sources seem to be self-published material, or the like. Not suitable as a source for wikipedia 78.15.199.51 (talk) 12:25, 2 August 2015 (UTC)

Error in link for reference 5.
Reference 5 is: Atkins, Michael (March 2012). "Could the Higgs Boson Be the Inflaton"

The link to the Atkins article is: http://indico.cern.ch/event/180122/material/slides/0.pdf

Opening this link leads to the page: http://indico.cern.ch/event/180122/contribution/8/attachments/239078/334729/NExT_2012_Williams0A.pdf

The title of the slide shown on this page is: "Regenerating Wimps" by Andrew Williams.

I would very much like to read the Atkins paper, so I hope someone will please correct this citation. BuzzBloom (talk) 12:27, 1 October 2015 (UTC)

Rename
I would like to suggest renaming this article Inflaton field, as that is the focus on the article. The current title, inflaton is derivative of this idea, and is minimally expressed here. There seems to be a need to have an article for the field prior to the article for the particle, in order to set the stage appropriately. Both terms point to this article already, too. When this article matures further, the particle could have a separate article. 75.139.254.117 (talk) 04:07, 26 October 2016 (UTC)

Expansion rate unclear
Article states that when the metastable state tunnels to inflatons+true vacuum Either it changes or it doesn't. Bwikioni (talk) 15:33, 12 September 2020 (UTC)
 * 1) the expansion rate does not change
 * 2) the expansion rate changes to the slower FLRW metric