The article presents modeling of inflationary scenarios for the first time in the f(R, T) theory of gravity. We assume the f(R, T) functional form to be \(R + \eta T\), where R denotes the Ricci scalar, T the trace of the energy-momentum tensor and \(\eta \) the model parameter (constant). We first investigated an inflationary scenario where the inflation is driven purely due to geometric effects outside of GR. We found the inflation observables to be independent of the number of e-foldings in this setup. The computed value of the spectral index is consistent with latest Planck 2018 dataset while the scalar to tensor ratio is a bit higher. We then proceeded to analyze the behavior of an inflation driven by f(R, T) gravity coupled with a real scalar field. By taking the slow-roll approximation, we generated interesting scenarios where a Klein Gordon potential leads to observationally consistent inflation observables. Our results make it clear-cut that in addition to the Ricci scalar and scalar fields, the trace of energy momentum tensor also plays a major role in driving inflationary scenarios.

中文翻译：

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f（R，T）重力膨胀

本文首次介绍了f（R，  T）引力理论中的通货膨胀情景建模。我们假设f（R，  T）的函数形式为\（R + \ eta T \），其中R表示Ricci标量，T表示能量动量张量和\（\ eta \）模型参数（常量）。我们首先研究了通货膨胀的情况，其中通货膨胀完全是由于GR之外的几何效应所致。我们发现，在这种设置中，可观察到的通货膨胀与电子折叠的数量无关。光谱指数的计算值与最新的Planck 2018数据集一致，而标量与张量的比例更高。然后，我们继续分析由f（R，  T）引力加上实数标量场。通过采取慢滚近似，我们产生了有趣的场景，其中克莱因·戈登势能导致观察到的一致的可观察到的通货膨胀。我们的结果清楚地表明，除了里奇标量和标量场之外，能量动量张量的痕迹在推动通货膨胀的情景中也起着重要作用。