Inflation as Shell Transition: Brane Deflation, Rebound, and Oscillation in Chute Cosmology

The standard inflationary paradigm successfully resolves the horizon, flatness, and monopole problems while generating a nearly scale-invariant spectrum of primordial perturbations, yet its reliance on an undetected inflaton field remains a foundational weakness. We propose an alternative mechanism within the Chute Cosmology framework (Barkley, 2026), in which the observable universe is Shell 7 in a recursive chain of nested black hole interiors. In this framework, cosmic inflation is reinterpreted as the interior experience of a catastrophic brane deflation event—the structural failure of the parent shell's membrane at the moment of black hole formation. The mechanism proceeds in three phases: (1) an initial catastrophic deflation producing the exponential expansion of classic inflation; (2) a first rebound corresponding to reheating and the hot Big Bang; and (3) a series of damped oscillations that persist over cosmological timescales, producing epoch-dependent variations in the expansion rate. The oscillatory phase offers potential explanations for the deceleration-to-acceleration transition, known CMB anomalies, anomalous components in baryon acoustic oscillation measurements, and the Hubble tension. We develop a damped harmonic oscillator model for the scale factor, derive connections between brane parameters and standard inflationary observables, and present eight testable predictions distinguishing this framework from single-field slow-roll inflation. The model eliminates the inflaton field entirely, replacing it with the geometry of shell transition—a purely mechanical process requiring no new particles or potentials.