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Inflation is a necessary cosmic mechanism to cure basic inconsistencies of the standard model of cosmology. These problems are usually `fixed' by postulating the existence of a scalar field (called the ``inflaton''). However, other less ad…
Processes of particle production during inflation can increase the amplitude of the scalar metric perturbations. We show that such a mechanism can naturally arise in supergravity models where an axion-like field, whose potential is…
The effective inflationary Lagrangian is a prominent challenge for theoretical cosmologists, since it may contain imprints of the quantum epoch. In view of the fact that higher order curvature terms might be present in the effective…
Quantum gravitational back-reaction offers the potential of simultaneously resolving the problem of the cosmological constant and providing a natural model of inflation in which scalars play no special role. In this model inflation begins…
We study the effective field theory of inflation, i.e. the most general theory describing the fluctuations around a quasi de Sitter background, in the case of single field models. The scalar mode can be eaten by the metric by going to…
Loops of inflationary gravitons are known to induce large temporal and spatial logarithms which can cause perturbation theory to break down. Nonlinear sigma models possess the same kind of derivative interactions and induce the same sorts…
This thesis is dedicated to studying cosmological inflation, which is a period of accelerated expansion in the very early Universe that is required to explain the observed anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background. Inflation, when…
The continual production of gravitons during inflation endows loop corrections with secular logarithms which grow nonperturbatively large during a prolonged period of inflation. The physics behind these effects is reviewed, along with a…
We study loop corrections to correlation functions of inflationary perturbations. Previous calculations have found that the two-point function can have a logarithmic running of the form log(k/mu), where k is the wavenumber of the…
We study inflationary dynamics using a recently introduced classical-quantum correspondence for investigating the backreaction of a quantum mechanical degree of freedom to a classical background. Using specifically a coupled…
The usual description of inflationary fluctuations uses the framework of quantum field theory (QFT) in curved spacetime, in which quantum fluctuations are superimposed on a classical background spacetime. Even for large fluctuations, such…
We use an invariant operator to study the quantum gravitational back-reaction to scalar perturbations during chaotic inflation. Our operator is the inverse covariant d'Alembertian expressed as a function of the local value of the inflaton.…
We determine corrections to the Hubble rate due to graviton loops in a cosmological background spacetime of constant deceleration parameter. The corrections are gauge-invariant, based on a recent proposal for all-order gauge-invariant…
An estimate of the one-loop correction to the power spectrum of the primordial curvature perturbation is given, assuming it is generated during a phase of single-field, slow-roll inflation. The loop correction splits into two parts, which…
In the approach of the effective field theory of modified gravity, we derive the second-order action and the equation of motion for tensor perturbations on the flat isotropic cosmological background. This analysis accommodates a wide range…
The physics of the inflationary universe requires the study of the out of equilibrium evolution of quantum fields in curved spacetime. We present the evolution for both the geometry and the matter (described by the quantum inflaton field)…
We treat a model in which tensor perturbations of de~Sitter spacetime, represented as a spatially flat model, are modified by the effects of the vacuum fluctuations of a massless conformally invariant field, such as the electromagnetic…
In this note we point out that, contrary to the standard point of view, slow roll inflation is due to high gravitational friction. We show that the requirement of slow roll coincides with the requirement of a flat scalar field potential in…
For internal gauge forces, the result of locally gauging, i.e., of performing the substitution $\partial \rightarrow D$, is physically the same whether performed on the action or on the corresponding Euler-Lagrange equations of motion.…
Inflation is the currently accepted paradigm for the beginnings of the Universe. To explain the observed almost scale invariant spectrum of density perturbations with only a slight spectral tilt, inflation must have been "slow roll", that…