Loop inflection-point inflation

A novel inflection-point inflation model is analysed. The model considers a massless scalar field, whose self-coupling's running is stabilised by a non-renormalisable operator. The running is controlled by a fermion loop. We find that successful inflation is possible for a natural value of the Yukawa coupling y similar or equal to 4 x 10(-4). The necessary fine-tuning is only similar to 10(-6), which improves on the typical tuning of inflection-point inflation models, such as MSSM inflation. The model predicts a spectral index within the 1-sigma bound of the latest CMB observations, with a very small negative running, and negligible tensors (r similar to 10-((9-10))). These results are largely independent of the order of the stabilising non-renormalisable operator. (C) 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.