Canonical equivalence, quantization and inflation for higher-order theory of gravity

Canonical formulation of higher-order theory of gravity has been attempted over decades. Different routes lead to different phase-space structures of the Hamiltonian. Although, these Hamiltonians are canonically equivalent at the classical level, their quantum counterparts may not be same, due to nonlinearity. Earlier, it has been proved that ‘Dirac constraint analysis’ (after taking care of divergent terms) and ‘Modified Horowitz’ Formalism’ lead to identical phase-space structure of the Hamiltonian for the gravitational action with scalar curvature squared terms. For the sake of completeness, this paper expatiates the extension of the same work for a general fourth-order gravitational action. Canonical quantization and semiclassical approximation are performed to explore that such a quantum theory transits successfully to a classical de-Sitter Universe. Inflation is also studied. Inflationary parameters show excellent agreement with the recently released Planck’s data.