Little Higgs Gives Warm Inflaton a Hand

Two decades after it was proposed as an alternative view of inflation, warm inflation, which involves warm rather than cold cosmic temperatures, has still not grown into a full-fledged theory. Unlike for standard inflation, researchers have not been able to build a simple and compelling model for warm inflation from first principles. Until now, that is. In a new study, the original proponent of warm inflation, Arjun Berera from the University of Edinburgh, UK, and colleagues have borrowed a concept from particle physics theories to derive just such a model. The result dispels the prevailing view that developing simple first-principles models of warm inflation would be impossible.