Observational Constraints and Preheating in Cuscuton Inflation

We study cuscuton inflation for the models where the potential of the cuscuton takes quadratic and exponential forms. We find that for the quadratic potential, a scalar spectral index \(n_s\) is not affected by cuscuton at the leading order in the slow-roll inflation models. However, a tensor-to-scalar ratio \(r\) can be suppressed. For the exponential potential of cuscuton, we find the condition for which the inflation has a graceful exit. Under this condition, the observational predictions in this model differ by a few percent from those found in standard inflation. We also examine the particle production due to parametric resonances in both models. We find that in Minkowski space the stage of parametric resonances can be described by the Mathieu equation. For the case where the cuscuton has quadratic potential, the amplitude of the driving force in the Mathieu equation has a similar form as that in standard inflation. Nevertheless, in the case of exponential potential, the amplitude of the driving force decreases faster than that in the standard case. However, parametric resonances in our models can be sufficiently broad possible for the exponential growth of the number of particles. We briefly discuss the case in which the expansion of space is taken into account.