William H. Kinney
We present a Fisher-matrix forecast for the detectability of a stochastic gravitational wave background generated by a first-order phase transition in the early universe. We use the DECIGO and LISA missions as reference cases. The source…
The well-known Borde-Guth-Vilenkin Theorem shows that inflationary spacetimes are generically geodesically past-incomplete, necessitating the existence of a pre-inflationary boundary of some sort, possibly singular. I discuss the…
We consider the possibility that the cosmic neutrino background might have a nonthermal spectrum, and investigate its effect on cosmological parameters relative to standard $\Lambda$-Cold Dark Matter ($\Lambda$CDM) cosmology. As a specific…
The Borde-Guth-Vilenkin (BGV) theorem states that any spacetime with net positive expansion must be geodesically incomplete. We derive a new version of the theorem using the fluid flow formalism of General Relativity. The theorem is purely…
We consider recently proposed bouncing cosmological models for which the Hubble parameter is periodic in time, but the scale factor grows from one cycle to the next as a mechanism for shedding entropy. Since the scale factor for a flat…
We construct a family of simple single-field inflation models consistent with Planck / BICEP Keck bounds which have a parametrically small tensor amplitude and no running of the scalar spectral index. The construction consists of a…
We calculate high-precision constraints on Natural Inflation relative to current observational constraints from Planck 2018 + BICEP/Keck(BK15) Polarization + BAO on $r$ and $n_S$, including post-inflationary history of the universe. We find…
I discuss constraints on the power spectrum of primordial tensor perturbations from a combination of Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) measurements and the gravitational wave direct detection experiments LIGO/Virgo and DECIGO. There are two…
We study Tachyacoustic models of cosmology, for which a scale-invariant perturbation spectrum is generated via superluminal sound speed instead of accelerated expansion, as in the case of inflation. We derive two bounds on the size of…
I conjecture an upper bound on the number of possible swampland conjectures by comparing the entropy required by the conjectures themselves to the Beckenstein-Hawking entropy of the cosmological horizon. Assuming of order 100 kilobits of…
We propose a more general version of the Trans-Planckian Censorship Conjecture (TCC) which can apply to models of inflation with varying speed of sound. We find that inflation models with $c_S < 1$ are in general more strongly constrained…
Recent studies show that there is tension between the de Sitter swampland conjectures proposed by Obeid, et al. and inflationary cosmology. In this paper, we consider an alternative to inflation, `tachyacoustic' cosmology, in light of…
There has been considerable recent interest in a new class of non-slow roll inflationary solutions known as \textit{constant roll} inflation. Constant roll solutions are a generalization of the ultra-slow roll (USR) solution, where the…
We consider single-field inflation in light of string-motivated "swampland" conjectures suggesting that effective scalar field theories with a consistent UV completion must have field excursion $\Delta \phi \lesssim M_{\rm Pl}$, in…
I apply recently proposed "Swampland" conjectures to eternal inflation in single-scalar field theories. Eternal inflation is a phase of infinite self-reproduction of a quasi-de Sitter universe which has been argued to be a generic…
Motivated by the apparent discrepancy between Cosmic Microwave Background measurements of the Hubble constant and measurements from Type-Ia supernovae, we construct a model for Dark Energy with equation of state $w = p / \rho < -1$,…
Slow roll solutions to inflationary potentials have been widely believed to be the only universal attractor. Over the last few years there has been growing interest in a new class of inflationary models known as Constant-Roll Inflation.…
We show that, if they exist, lepton number asymmetries ($L_\alpha$) of neutrino flavors should be distinguished from the ones ($L_i$) of mass eigenstates, since Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN) bounds on the flavor eigenstates cannot be…
In this paper, we consider two case examples of Dirac-Born-Infeld (DBI) generalizations of canonical large-field inflation models, characterized by a reduced sound speed, $c_{S} < 1$. The reduced speed of sound lowers the tensor-scalar…
We numerically solve the evolution equations of neutrino three-flavor density matrices, and show that, even if neutrino oscillations mix neutrino flavors, large lepton number asymmetries are still allowed in certain limits by Big Bang…