Related papers: Sustainability of multi-field inflation and bound …
We provide type IIB string embeddings of two axion variants of natural inflation. We use a combination of RR 2 form axions as the inflaton field and have its potential generated by non perturbative effects in the superpotential. Besides…
The inflaton field responsible for inflation may not be a canonical fundamental scalar. It is possible that the inflaton is a composite of fermions or it may have a decay width. In these cases the standard procedure for calculating the…
We describe a broad class of multi-field inflationary models with spontaneously broken conformal invariance. It generalizes the recently discovered class of cosmological attractors with a single inflaton field. In the new multi-field…
We study boundary crossing probability in the context of stochastic inflation. We prove that for a generic multi-field inflationary potential, the probability that the inflaton reaches infinitely far regions in the field space is critically…
We explore some issues in slow roll inflation in situations where field excursions are small compared to $M_p$. We argue that for small field inflation, minimizing fine tuning requires low energy supersymmetry and a tightly constrained…
String theory enjoys an elevated role among quantum gravity theories, since it seems to be the most consistent UV completion of general relativity and the Standard Model. However, it is hard to verify the existence of this underlying theory…
The continuous shift symmetry of axions is at the heart of several realizations of inflationary models. In particular, axion monodromy inflation aims at achieving super-Planckian field ranges for the inflaton in the context of string…
Following the 2015 Planck release, we briefly comment on the status and some ongoing opportunities in the interface between inflationary cosmology, string theory, and CMB data. The constraints in the $r$-$n_s$ plane introduce a new…
We investigate the stochastic dynamics of the long wavelength modes of a generic light scalar field that during inflation is coupled to another scalar field. The coupling plays an important role for the fluctuation of the field amplitude…
We propose that under certain conditions the universal open string tachyon can drive topological inflation in moduli stabilised frameworks. Namely, the presence of electric field in the world volume of the D-brane can slow down its decay…
We study how both the swampland distance conjecture and the Lyth bound affect the parameter space of multi-field models of inflation. A generic feature of multi-field inflation is that the geodesic distance…
We revisit inflation coupled with vector fields employing kinetic coupling in the comoving gauge. It is known that there is a cumulative effect $IN^2$ on the curvature power spectrum. For a large number of e-foldings $N$, this contribution…
Effective field theory is a powerful organizing principle that allows to describe physics below a certain scale model-independently. Above that energy scale, identified with the cutoff, the EFT description breaks down and new physics is…
We investigate the possibility of $D$-term inflation within the framework of type I string-inspired models. Although $D$-term inflation model has the excellent property that it is free from the so-called $\eta$- problem, two serious…
We study the conditions needed to have an early epoch of inflationary expansion with a potential coming from IIB superstring theory with fluxes involving two moduli fields. The phenomenology of this potential is different from the usual…
The BICEP2 observations, if confirmed, point to a high scale of inflation and large field excursions during the inflationary era. Non-compact string moduli spaces are a suggestive setting for these phenomena. While unlikely to be described…
Cosmological implications of Higgs field fluctuations during inflation are considered. This study is based on the Standard Model and the standard quadratic model of chaotic inflation where the Higgs field is minimally coupled to gravity and…
We present a cosmological model in which a single Dirac field with a flat potential can give rise to inflation within the framework of the Einstein-Cartan theory. It is shown that our Dirac-field model leads to a nearly scale-invariant…
We propose a new, generic mechanism of inflation mediated by a balance between potential forces and a Chern-Simons interaction. Such quasi-topological interactions are ubiquitous in string theory. In the minisuperspace approximation, their…
Although the paradigm of inflation has been extensively studied to demonstrate how macroscopic inhomogeneities in our universe originate from quantum fluctuations, most of the established literature ignores the crucial role that…