What-if inflaton is a spinor condensate

In the usual cosmological inflationary scenarios, the scalar field – inflaton — is usually assumed to be an elementary field. In this essay, we ask: What are the observational signatures, if the scalar field is a spinor condensate? and Is there a way to distinguish between the canonical scalar field and the spinor condensate driven models? In the homogeneous and isotropic background, we show that, although the dark-spinor (Elko) condensate leads to the identical acceleration equation as that of the canonical scalar field driven inflation, the dynamics of the two models are different. In the slow-roll limit, we show that the model, predicts a running of scalar spectral index consistent with the WMAP data. We show that the consistency relations between the spinor condensate and canonical scalar field driven model are different which can be tested using the future CMB and gravitational wave missions. Essay received an honorable mention from the Gravity Research Foundation essay competition in 2009Inflation is currently considered to be the best paradigm to describe the early universe. One of the main reasons is the fact that inflation is deeply rooted in the basic principles