Related papers: Possibly Large Corrections to the Inflationary Obs…
We show how observations of the perturbation spectra produced during inflation may be used to constrain the parameters of general scalar-tensor theories of gravity, which include both an inflaton and dilaton field. An interesting feature of…
Extremely large surveys with future experiments like Euclid and the SKA will soon allow us to access perturbation modes close to the Hubble scale, with wavenumbers $k \sim \mathcal{H}$. If a modified gravity theory is responsible for cosmic…
Out-of-equilibrium, non-perturbative, quantum effects significantly modify the standard picture of inflation in a wide class of models including new, natural, and hybrid inflation. We find that the quantum evolution of a single real…
Inflation is nowadays a well-established paradigm consistent with all the observations. The precise nature of the inflaton is however unknown and its role could be played by any candidate able to imitate a scalar condensate in the slow-roll…
In a recent paper Damour and Mukhanov describe a scenario where inflation may continue during the oscillatory phase. This effect is possible because the scalar field spends a significant fraction of each period of oscillation on the upper…
We consider small-field models which invoke the usual framework for the effective field theory, and large-field models which go beyond that. Present and future possibilities for discriminating between the models are assessed, on the…
We explore whether multifield inflationary models make unambiguous predictions for fundamental cosmological observables. Focusing on $N$-quadratic inflation, we numerically evaluate the full perturbation equations for models with 2, 3, and…
Most models of inflation have small parameters, either to guarantee sufficient inflation or the correct magnitude of the density perturbations. In this paper we show that, in supersymmetric theories with weak scale supersymmetry breaking,…
We use the 3+1 formalism of numerical relativity to investigate the robustness of Starobinsky and Higgs inflation to inhomogeneous initial conditions, in the form of either field gradient or kinetic energy density. Sub-Hubble and…
We develop a numerical statistical method to study linear cosmological fluctuations in inflationary scenarios with multiple fields, and apply it to an ensemble of six-field inflection point models in string theory. The latter are concrete…
We show the existence of a general mechanism by which heavy scalar fields can be destabilized during inflation, relying on the fact that the curvature of the field space manifold can dominate the stabilizing force from the potential and…
We consider cosmological perturbations caused by modulated inflaton velocity. During inflation, the inflaton motion is damped and the velocity is determined by the parameters such as couplings or masses that may depend on light…
The observational constraints on the primordial power spectrum have tightened considerably with the release of the first year analysis of the WMAP observations, especially when combined with the results from other CMB experiments and galaxy…
In this paper we study possible observational consequences of the bouncing cosmology. We consider a model where a phase of inflation is preceded by a cosmic bounce. While we consider in this paper only that the bounce is due to loop quantum…
The relative growth of field and metric perturbations during preheating is sensitive to initial conditions set in the preceding inflationary phase. Recent work suggests this may protect super-Hubble metric perturbations from resonant…
We examine a wide class of multi-field inflationary models based on fields that decay or stabilize during inflation in a staggered fashion. The fields driving assisted inflation are on flat, short stretches, before they encounter a sharp…
Recently, it was proposed that a small true vacuum universe can inflate spontaneously, in principle. Furthermore, there should be matter creation in vacuum inflation due to quantum fluctuations, and the matter created will influence the…
The next decade will feature an abundance of novel cosmological data, while many fundamental questions about inflation remain. Given this, there is ample need for maximally efficient calculations, especially in non-standard scenarios for…
We revisit the status of hybrid inflation in the light of Planck and recent BICEP2 results, taking care of possible transient violations of the slow-roll conditions as the field passes from the large field to the vacuum dominated phase. The…
In light of the recent results from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT), which have provided a notable shift in the constraints on $(n_s, r)$ and placed several otherwise viable models of inflation in tension with the latest data, we…