Related papers: Flavon Inflation
The accelerated expansion of the early universe is an integral part of modern cosmology and dynamically realized by the mechanism of inflation. The simplest theoretical description of the inflationary paradigm is based on the assumption of…
We consider a quantum corrected inflation scenario driven by a generic GUT or Standard Model type particle model whose scalar field playing the role of an inflaton has a strong non-minimal coupling to gravity. We show that currently widely…
Fermion condensate inflation, where inflation emerges from four-fermion interactions induced by spacetime torsion, removes the need for additional scalar fields beyond the Standard Model. In this framework, the fermion field can be…
We consider a set of scalar fields, consisting of a single flat direction and one or several non-flat directions. We take our cue from the MSSM, considering separately D-flat and F-flat directions, but our results apply to any…
Higgs inflation scenario is one of the most compelling models of inflation at present time. It not only explains the observed data well, but also provides means to include the inflaton field within the well understood Standard Model of…
Effects of soft SUSY-breaking terms on inflation potentials are discussed. There exist generic constraints that must be satisfied in order not for the inflaton potential to loose its flatness. We examine explicitly the constraints in the…
This paper is based on a talk in which I discussed how a component of the dynamical affine connection, that is independent of the metric, can drive inflation in agreement with observations. This provides a geometrical origin for the…
We consider a composite Higgs model based on the $SU(6)/Sp(6)$ coset, where an $U(1)$ subgroup of $Sp(6)$ is identified as the flavor symmetry. A complex scalar field $s$, which is a pseudo-Nambu-Goldstone boson of the broken symmetry,…
Supersymmetric theories often include the non-compact directions in the field space along which the tree level potential grows only up to a certain limited value (determined by the mass scale of the theory) and then stays constant for the…
We present an effective model where the inflaton is a relaxion that scans the Higgs mass and sets it at the weak scale. The dynamics consist of a long epoch in which inflation is due to the shallow slope of the potential, followed by a few…
The idea of the strongly interacting field theories constitutes one of the pillars of the standard model of particle physics. The goal of this work is to export such theories to cosmology. Here we are interested in models in which the…
We consider models of inflation in supergravity with a shift symmetry. We focus on models with one moduli and one inflaton field. The presence of this symmetry guarantees the existence of a flat direction for the inflaton field. Mildly…
I study two-stage hybrid inflation driven by moduli fields, corresponding to flat directions of supersymmetry, lifted by supergravity corrections. The first stage corresponds to a period of either fast-roll or `locked' inflation, induced by…
We discuss two important modifications of inflationary paradigm. Until very recently we believed that inflation automatically leads to flatness of the universe, Omega = 1. We also thought that post-inflationary phase transitions in GUTs may…
We present a unified model where the same scalar field can drive inflation and account for the present dark matter abundance. This scenario is based on the incomplete decay of the inflaton field into right-handed neutrino pairs, which is…
We investigate the possibility of using the only known fundamental scalar, the Higgs, as an inflaton with minimal coupling to gravity. The peculiar appearance of a plateau or a false vacuum in the renormalised effective scalar potential…
Inflationary expansion of space-time provides us with an efficient particle production mechanism in the Early Universe. The fermion production efficiency depends critically on the particle mass, which is generated via the Yukawa coupling…
We construct a model of hybrid inflation within a controlled five-dimensional effective field theory framework. The inflaton and waterfall fields are realized as naturally light moduli of the 5D compactification. At the quantum level,…
We investigate the validity of effective field theory methods and the decoupling of heavy fields during inflation. Considering models of inflation in which the inflaton is coupled to a heavy (super-Hubble) degree of freedom initially in its…
We present a new general mechanism for generating curvature perturbations after inflation. Our model is based on the simple assumption that a field that starts to oscillate after inflation has a potential characterized by an underlying…