Einstein--Gauss--Bonnet Inflationary Cosmology in Phase-$\theta$ Formalism

Abstract

A central challenge in testing inflationary scenarios with cosmic microwave background (CMB) data is to derive predictions for cosmological observables that remain accurate beyond the slow-roll regime, where the standard consistency relations are no longer applicable. We address this issue in the context of Einstein--Gauss--Bonnet (EGB) gravity by introducing a phase-$\theta$ parametrization of the inflationary dynamics. Within this framework, the background evolution and the coefficients governing scalar and tensor perturbations are expressed entirely in terms of a single monotonic phase variable and the Hubble parameter. This construction provides a closed, analytical mapping between the background parameters of a given model and the associated inflationary observables. A notable advantage of the proposed parametrization is that it remains regular throughout the inflationary epoch, including the end-of-inflation regime, in which the conventional slow-roll consistency relations no longer hold. As an illustrative application, we consider a Starobinsky-type potential supplemented by a linear coupling between the inflaton and the Gauss--Bonnet invariant. Using the proposed formalism, we demonstrate that the resulting predictions of the Starobinsky model are consistent with the most recent constraints from ACT DR6 and BICEP/Keck, explicitly incorporating the impact of the non-minimal Gauss--Bonnet coupling on the expected values of the cosmological perturbation parameters. Finally, we compute the corresponding relic stochastic gravitational-wave background and evaluate its detectability with current and forthcoming gravitational-wave observatories.