IS DOUBLE INFLATION LIKELY

The likelihood that double inflation might break scale invariance and help produce cosmological large-scale structure is examined. The cumulative effects of quantum fluctuations in an auxilliary field, during the evolution of the first inflaton, can lead to a large dispersion in the probability distribution of when the auxilliary field becomes responsible for inflation. Hence, it may be very improbable that double inflation, and similar mechanisms that require tuning of scalar fields, produce breaks on scales of astrophysical interest. © 1990 The American Physical Society.