  We investigate the high-energy properties of matter theories coupled to
quantum gravity. Specifically, we show that quantum gravity fluctuations
generically induce matter self-interactions in a scalar theory. Our
calculations apply within asymptotically safe quantum gravity, where our
results indicate that the UV is dominated by an interacting fixed point, with
non-vanishing gravitational as well as matter couplings. In particular,
momentum-dependent scalar self-interactions are non-zero and induce a
non-vanishing momentum-independent scalar potential. Furthermore we point out
that terms of this type can have observable consequences in the context of
scalar-field driven inflation, where they can induce potentially observable
non-Gaussianities in the CMB.
