We provide a parametrisation of a loxodrome by three specially arranged cycles. The parametrisation is covariant under fractional linear transformations of the complex plane and naturally encodes conformal properties of loxodromes. Selected geometrical examples illustrate the usage of parametrisation. Our work extends the set of objects in Lie sphere geometry-circle, lines and points-to the natural maximal conformally-invariant family, which also includes loxodromes.

A Friedman cosmology is investigated based on scalar-tensor gravitation with general metric coupling and scalar potential functions. We show that for a broad class of such functions, the scalar field can be dynamically trapped using a recently suggested mechanism. The trapped scalar can drive inflation and accelerated cosmic expansion, compatible with standard requirements. The inflationary phase admits a natural exit with a value of the Hubble parameter dictated by the duration of inflation in a parameter independent manner. For inflationary duration consistent with the GUT description, the resulting Hubble parameter is found to be consistent with its observed value.

The MacDowell-Mansouri formulation of general relativity is based on a gauge theory whose gauge algebra depends on the sign of the cosmological constant. In this article, we show that the gauge algebra is uniquely determined by the conformal structure of spacetime itself. Specifically, we show that in vacuum: the spacetime conformal holonomy algebra coincides with the MacDowell-Mansouri gauge algebra for both signs of the cosmological constant, in both Lorentzian and Euclidean metric signatures.