Related papers: Possibly Large Corrections to the Inflationary Obs…
The motion of a pseudo-scalar field $X$ during inflation naturally induces a significant amplification of the gauge fields to which it is coupled. The amplified gauge fields can source characteristic scalar and tensor primordial…
In quasi-single field inflation models, massive isocurvature modes, that are coupled to the inflaton and have mass of order the Hubble parameter, can have nontrivial impacts on density perturbations, especially non-Gaussianities. We study a…
We consider the effect of the Gibbons-Hawking radiation on the inflaton in the situation where it is coupled to a large number of spectator fields. We argue that this will lead to two important effects - a thermal contribution to the…
The evolution of two slow--rolling scalar fields with potentials of the form $V=V_0 \phi^{-\alpha}\exp(-\beta \phi^m)$ is studied. Considering different values of the parameters $\alpha$, $\beta$ and $m$, we derive several new inflationary…
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…
We show that a moduli space of the form predicted by string theory, lifted by supersymmetry breaking, gives rise to successful inflation for large regions of parameter space without any modification or fine tuning. This natural realization…
Slow-roll inflation generically makes several predictions: a flat Universe, primordial adiabatic density perturbations, and a stochastic gravity-wave background. Each inflation model will further predict specific relations between the…
We show that multi-field inflationary models with negligible turning in field space during inflation can lead to an effective sourcing of adiabatic from entropic perturbations {\it after} the end of inflation. We illustrate this general…
We compute the universal generic corrections to the inflationary power spectrum due to unknown high-energy physics. We arrive at this result via a careful integrating out of massive fields in the "in-in" formalism yielding a consistent and…
This paper is devoted to the analysis of a class of $F(R)$ gravity, where additional logarithmic corrections are assumed. The gravitational action includes an exponential term and a $R^2$ inflationary term, both with logarithmic…
We study inflation for a quantum scalar electrodynamics model in curved space-time and for higher-derivative quantum gravity (QG) coupled with scalar electrodynamics. The corresponding renormalization-group (RG) improved potential is…
Slow-roll inflation can be studied as an effective field theory. The form of the inflaton potential consistent with the data is V(phi) = N M^4 w(phi/[sqrt{N} M_{Pl}]) where phi is the inflaton field, M is the inflation energy scale, and N ~…
We consider the interaction between perturbations in the inflaton and in the metric during the preheating phase in simple inflationary models. By numerically integrating the Einstein field equations we are able to gauge the impact of…
In the hope of avoiding model dependence of the cosmological observables, phenomenological parametrizations of Cosmic Inflation have recently been proposed. Typically, they are expressed in terms of two parameters associated with an…
We study the implications of deformed quantum algebras for the generation of primordial perturbations from slow-roll inflation. Specifically, we assume that the quantum commutator of the inflaton's amplitude and momentum in Fourier space…
We initially consider two simple situations where inflationary slow roll parameters are large and modes no longer freeze out shortly after exiting the horizon, treating both cases analytically. We then consider applications to transient…
We study the contribution of spectator massive scalar fields to the inflationary density perturbations through the universal gravitational coupling. We find that such contribution has several remarkable properties: it does not decrease as…
We study primordial perturbations from hyperinflation, proposed recently and based on a hyperbolic field-space. In the previous work, it was shown that the field-space angular momentum supported by the negative curvature modifies the…
We determine the frequency of regions of small-field inflation in the Wigner landscape as an approximation to random supergravities/type IIB flux compactifications. We show that small-field inflation occurs exponentially more often than…
It is conjectured that inflation, taking account of quantum gravity, leads to a discrete spectrum of cosmological perturbations, instead of the continuous Gaussian spectrum predicted by standard field theory in an unquantized background.…