Related papers: General Single Field Inflation with Large Positive…
I examine the status of inflationary cosmology in light of the first-year data from the WMAP satellite, focusing on the simplest models of inflation: those driven by a single scalar field. The WMAP observation of the Cosmic Microwave…
We consider the gravitational generation of the massive Z-boson field of the standard model, due to the natural breaking of its conformal invariance during inflation. The electroweak symmetry restoration at the end of inflation turns the…
We compute the 3-point correlation function for a general model of inflation driven by a single, minimally coupled scalar field. Our approach is based on the numerical evaluation of both the perturbation equations and the integrals which…
We perform the analysis of the trispectrum of curvature perturbations generated by the interactions characterizing a general theory of single-field inflation obtained by effective field theory methods. We find that curvature-generated…
We explore inflation via the effective potential of the minimal Wess-Zumino model, considering both the real and imaginary components of the complex field. Using transport techniques, we calculate the full allowed range of $n_s$, $r$ and…
We propose new supergravity models describing chaotic Linde- and Starobinsky-like inflation in terms of a single chiral superfield. The key ideas to obtain a positive vacuum energy during large field inflation are (i) stabilization of the…
We study multi-field inflation in random potentials generated via a non-equilibrium random matrix theory process. We make a novel modification of the process to include correlations between the elements of the Hessian and the height of the…
In this paper we summarise the status of single field models of inflation in light of the WMAP 7 data release. We find little has changed since the 5 year release, and results are consistent with previous findings. The increase in the upper…
The bispectrum of scalar mode density perturbations is analysed for the strong regime of warm inflationary models. This analysis generalises previous results by allowing damping terms in the inflaton equation of motion that are dependent on…
We calculate Large Scale Structure observables for non-Gaussianity arising from non-Bunch-Davies initial states in single field inflation. These scenarios can have substantial primordial non-Gaussianity from squeezed (but observable)…
We consider "new inflation" inflationary models at small fields, embedded in minimal ${\cal N}=1$ supergravity with a single chiral superfield. Imposing a period of inflation compatible with experiment severely restricts possible models,…
We generalize the Effective Field Theory of Inflation to include additional light scalar degrees of freedom that are in their vacuum at the time the modes of interest are crossing the horizon. In order to make the scalars light in a natural…
The model of Natural Inflation is examined in light of recent 3-year data from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe and shown to provide a good fit. The inflaton potential is naturally flat due to shift symmetries, and in the simplest…
In light of the results from the WMAP three-year sky survey, we study an inflationary model based on a single-field polynomial potential, with up to quartic terms in the inflaton field. Our analysis is performed in the context of the…
We propose a new framework for multi-field inflation in which a nearly constant potential energy is maintained during inflation before decreasing rapidly, in a manner analogous to a classical top spinning upright for a long time before…
We review models which generate a large non-Gaussianity of the local form. We first briefly consider three models which generate the non-Gaussianity either at or after the end of inflation; the curvaton scenario, modulated (p)reheating and…
We extract parameters relevant for distinguishing among single-field inflation models from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) data set, and from a combination of the WMAP data and seven other Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB)…
Working in an idealised framework in which a series of phases of evolution defined by the second slow-roll parameter $\eta$ are matched together, we calculate the reduced bispectrum, $f_{\rm NL}$, for models of inflation with a large peak…
We analyze the generation of seed magnetic fields during de Sitter inflation considering a non-invariant conformal term in the electromagnetic Lagrangian of the form $-\frac14 I(\phi) F_{\mu \nu} \widetilde{F}^{\mu \nu}$, where $I(\phi)$ is…
We present constraints on canonical single-field inflation derived from WMAP five year, ACBAR, QUAD, BICEP data combined with the halo power spectrum from SDSS LRG7. Models with a non-scale-invariant spectrum and a red tilt n_s < 1 are now…