Spinodal inflation - art. no. 041301

Out-of-equilibrium, non-perturbative, quantum effects significantly modify the standard picture of inflation in a wide class of models including new, natural, and hybrid inflation. We find that the quantum evolution of a sing le real inflaton field may be modeled by a classical theory of two homogene ous scaler fields. We briefly discuss the important observational consequen ces that are expected to result. [S0556-2821(99)50314-7].