Evolution of the universe prior to inflation in loop quantum cosmology

Abstract We studied the dynamics of pre-inflation with generic potentials, namely and , in the context of loop quantum cosmology, where the initial singularity is resolved by a non-singular quantum bounce. Initially, the background evolution is dominated by either kinetic or potential energy at the quantum bounce. In the case of kinetic energy dominated evolution at the bounce, we found three generic phases, namely bouncing, transition, and slow-roll inflation. The first two regimes vanish in the case of potential energy dominated evolution; however, slow-roll inflation remains. Therefore, we found physically viable initial conditions of the inflaton field, which must have a minimum number of -folds of 60 to be compatible with observations. Additionally, we analyzed the phase space diagram for the models under consideration; we found that all the trajectories of the inflaton field start from the bounce and move toward stable attractor points.