Related papers: Monodromy in the CMB: Gravity Waves and String Inf…
We analyze a distinctive mechanism for inflation in which particle production slows down a scalar field on a steep potential, and show how it descends from angular moduli in string compactifications. The analysis of density perturbations --…
We develop an integral form for the bispectrum in general single-field inflation whose domain of validity includes models of inflation where the background evolution is not constrained to be slowly varying everywhere. Our integral form…
An inflationary stage dominated by a $D$-term avoids the slow-roll problem of inflation in supergravity and may emerge in theories with a non-anomalous or anomalous U(1) gauge symmetry. The most intriguing and commonly invoked possibility…
We use cosmic microwave background (CMB) data from the 9-year WMAP release to derive constraints on monodromy inflation, which is characterized by a linear inflaton potential with a periodic modulation. We identify two possible periodic…
The slow-roll approximation to inflation is ultimately justified by the presence of inflationary attractors for the orbits of the solutions of the dynamical equations in phase space. There are many indications that the inflaton field…
When cosmic strings are formed during inflation, they regrow to reach a scaling regime, leaving distinct imprints on the stochastic gravitational wave background (SGWB). Such signatures, associated with specific primordial features, can be…
We study a mechanism to produce the circular polarization of primordial gravitational waves. The circular polarization is generated during the super-inflation driven by the Gauss-Bonnet term in the string-inspired cosmology. The instability…
We propose a new realization of axion monodromy inflation in which axion monodromy arises from torsional cycles in a type IIB compactification. A class of monomial potentials is obtained with specific values for the power index. Moreover,…
Current bounds from the polarization of the CMB predict the scale-invariant gravitational wave (GW) background of inflation to be out of reach for upcoming GW interferometers. This prospect dramatically changes if the inflaton is a…
The brane-world scenario provides an intriguing possibility to explore the phenomenological cosmology implied by string/M theory. In this paper, we consider a modified Randall-Sundrum single brane model with two natural generalizations: a…
We revisit axion monodromy inflation in the context of UV-inspired models and point out that its cosmological observables are sensitive to heavy fields with masses far above the Hubble scale, such as the moduli of flux compactifications. By…
We investigate the gravitational-wave background predicted by a two-scalar-field cosmological model that aims to unify primordial inflation with the dark sector, namely late-time dark energy and dark matter, in a single and self-consistent…
The original axion natural inflation model predicts a tensor-to-scalar ratio exceeding experimental limits. Conversely, in aligned axion inflation, inflation can proceed along trajectories emerging from near a saddle point of the two-field…
The spectrum of primordial gravitational waves is one of the most robust inflationary observables, often thought of as a direct probe of the energy scale of inflation. We present a simple model, where the dynamics controlling this…
We find multi-scalar effective field theories (EFTs) that can achieve a slow inflationary roll despite having a scalar potential that does not satisfy the usual slow-roll condition (d V)^2 << V^2/Mp^2. They evade the usual slow-roll…
We study a new framework for brane-antibrane inflation where moduli stabilisation relies purely on perturbative corrections to the effective action. This guarantees that the model does not suffer from the eta-problem. The inflationary…
We study the inflationary gravitational wave background induced by Abelian gauge fields generated by non-minimal kinetic and axial couplings to the inflaton. We show that, up to slow-roll corrections, for coupling functions that share the…
We construct a class of single small field models of inflation that can predict, contrary to popular wisdom, an observable gravitational wave signal in the cosmic microwave background anisotropies. The spectral index, its running, the…
We propose the generic no-scale inflation inspired from string theory compactifications. We consider the K\"ahler potentials with an inflaton field $\varphi$, as well as one, two, and three K\"ahler moduli. Also, we consider the…
We consider a probe codimension-2 brane inflation scenario in a warped six-dimensional flux compactification. Our background model is Salam-Sezgin gauged supergravity with codimension-2 brane sources, which preserve N=1 supersymmetry. The…