Related papers: Inflation and Unification
Pseudo-Goldstone bosons (pGBs) can provide technically natural inflatons, as has been comparatively well-explored in the simplest axion examples. Although inflationary success requires trans-Planckian decay constants, f > Mp, several…
We consider a massless scalar field, conformally coupled to the Ricci scalar curvature, in the pre-inflation era of a closed FLRW Universe. The scalar field potential can be of the form of the Coleman-Weinberg one-loop potential, which is…
We consider models of chaotic inflation driven by the real parts of a conjugate pair of Higgs superfields involved in the spontaneous breaking of a grand unification symmetry at a scale assuming its supersymmetric value. Employing quadratic…
The hierarchy of fermion masses in the standard model may arise via the breaking of discrete gauge symmetries. The renormalizable interactions of the flavor-symmetry-breaking potential can have accidental global symmetries that are…
We present a concrete supersymmetric grand unified model based on the Pati-Salam gauge group SU(4)_c x SU(2)_L x SU(2)_R and leading naturally to smooth hybrid inflation, which avoids the cosmological disaster encountered in the standard…
We consider a supersymmetric hybrid inflation scenario in which the U(1) $R$-symmetry is explicitly broken by Planck scale suppressed operators in the superpotential. We provide an example with minimal K\"ahler potential, with the…
We consider a renormalizable extension of the minimal supersymmetric standard model (MSSM) endowed by an R and a gauged B - L symmetry. The model incorporates chaotic inflation driven by a quartic potential, associated with the Higgs…
We consider the possibility that higher-curvature corrections could drive inflation after the compactification to four dimensions. Assuming that the low-energy limit of the fundamental theory is eleven-dimensional supergravity to the lowest…
We review locked inflation and we critically address phenomenological and consistency issues thathave appeared in the literature. A natural window of opportunity is found for the original scenario.Moreover, a simple way to enlarge the…
In the present work we study GUT Coleman-Weinberg inflation with a nonminimal coupling to gravity. In this kind of model one usually finds that either the nonminimal coupling is large or the inflaton self-coupling in unnaturally small. We…
We present a new type of one-field models for open inflation utilizing a nonminimally coupled scalar field with polynomial potentials in which the Coleman-de Luccia instanton does exist and slow-roll inflation after the bubble nucleation is…
In this paper we present a novel formulation of chaotic hybrid inflation in supergravity. The model includes a waterfall field which spontaneously breaks a gauged $U_1(B-L)$ at a GUT scale. This allows for the possibility of future model…
We prove that a homogeneous and isotropic universe containing a scalar field with a power-law potential, $V(\phi )=A\phi ^{n}$, with $0<n<1$ and $A>0$ always develops a finite-time singularity at which the Hubble rate and its first…
The minimal supersymmetric (or F-term) hybrid inflation is defined by a unique renormalizable superpotential, fixed by a $U(1)$ R-symmetry, and it employs a canonical K\"{a}hler potential. The inflationary potential takes into account both…
We consider a smooth hybrid inflation scenario based on a supersymmetric SU(2)_L x SU(2)_R x U(1)_B-L model. The Higgs triplets involved in the model play a key role in inflation as well as in explaining the observed baryon asymmetry of the…
Inflation may occur while rolling into the metastable supersymmetry-breaking vacuum of massive supersymmetric QCD. We explore the range of parameters in which slow-roll inflation and long-lived metastable supersymmetry breaking may be…
We investigate the initiation of cosmic inflation, in full numerical relativity, from pre-inflationary scenarios with large tensor and vector fluctuations in the metric. These settings are characterized by having large values in the Weyl…
We investigate the quantum cosmological tunneling scenario for inflationary models. Within a path-integral approach, we derive the corresponding tunneling probability distribution. A sharp peak in this distribution can be interpreted as the…
We make a more general determination of the inflationary observables in the standard 4-D and 5-D single-field inflationary scenarios, by the exact reconstruction of the dynamics of the inflation potential during the observable inflation…
It is well known that in manifestly Lorentz invariant theories with nontrivial kinetic terms, perturbations around some classical backgrounds can travel faster than light. These exotic "supersonic" models may have interesting consequences…