Remarks on Realizing Inflation in String and Particle Physics Models

The recent measurements of cosmological parameters by the Planck collaboration favors inflationary models with a redshifted spectrum and a very low tensor-to-scalar ratio. Two well-studied scenarios in the particle physics/string theory literature – inflection point and Starobinsky inflation – are in good agreement with these data. In these proceedings, we report on general studies of these two scenarios. We discuss similarities in their structure which, we argue, arise from a common mechanism: degenerate critical point of the potential. In particular, we emphasize their ability to support a possible primordial explanation for the anomalous suppression of the power spectrum at large scales.