Dr. Adriana Menkara

T a l k : 18. December 2025

Models of inflation at the pole

α-attractors are a broad class of inflationary models whose predictions do not change even if one significantly modifies the inflationary potential. The attractor properties stem from the presence of a non-minimal coupling to gravity in the Jordan frame, which then translates to a non-canonical kinetic term in the Einstein frame. Non-minimal couplings are ubiquitous in inflationary models, including Starobinsky and Higgs inflation. I'll start by reviewing the original models and then, by taking the conformal limit, we arrive at a class of models that we dub inflation at the pole, that can be realized for any scalar field, such as the SM Higgs or the Peccei-Quinn field responsible for the QCD axion.