Inflationary cosmology in f (R, T) modified gravity

In this paper, we investigate the cosmological inflation scenario in the context of f (R, T) theory of gravity, where f is a generic function of the curvature scalar R and the trace T of the energy momentum tensor. Assuming that the slow roll inflation conditions hold true in f (R, T) gravity, we obtain from the Hubble slow roll parameters, the various inflation-related observables such as the tensor-to-scalar ratio r, the scalar spectral index ns, the running alpha s of the spectral index and the tensor spectral nT for two specific f (R, T) models. To see the viability of these models, a numerical analysis of such parameters has been done. The results show that by using the various values of free parameters it is possible to obtain a viable compatibility with the observational data. (c) 2021 Published by Elsevier Inc.