Related papers: Conformal Inflation, Modulated Reheating, and WMAP…
We introduce conformal coupling of the Standard Model Higgs field to gravity and discuss the subsequent modification of $R^2$-inflation. The main observation is a lower temperature of reheating which happens mostly through scalaron decays…
We provide an analytical study of the coupling of short and long wavelength fluctuation modes during the initial phase of reheating in two field models like hybrid inflation. In these models, there is - at linear order in perturbation…
Usual inflation is realized with a slow rolling scalar field minimally coupled to gravity. In contrast, we consider dynamics of a scalar with a flat effective potential, conformally coupled to gravity. Surprisingly, it contains an attractor…
We investigate inflationary models leading to density perturbations with a spectral index $n>1$ (``blue spectra"). These perturbation spectra may be useful to simultaneously account for both the amount of ultra large-scale power required to…
We consider a model of preheating where the coupling of the inflaton to the preheat field is modulated by an additional scalar field which is light during inflation. We establish that such a model produces the observed curvature…
We investigate the phenomenology of warm inflation and present generic results about the evolution of the inflaton and radiation fields. The general conditions required for warm inflation to take place are derived and discussed. A…
A model is developed in which the inflaton potential experiences a sudden small change in its second derivative (the effective mass of the inflaton). An exact treatment demonstrates that the resulting density perturbation has a quasi-flat…
Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) observations are used to constrain reheating to Standard Model (SM) particles after a period of inflation. As a light spectator field, the SM Higgs boson acquires large field values from its quantum…
We analyze an inflationary model in which part of the power in density perturbations arises due to particle production. The amount of particle production is modulated by an auxiliary field. Given an initial gradient for the auxiliary field,…
The curvaton and the inhomogeneous reheating scenarios for the generation of the cosmological curvature perturbation on large scales represent an alternative to the standard slow-roll scenario where the observed density perturbations are…
We analyse the dynamics of spinodal decomposition in inflationary cosmology using the closed time path formalism of out of equilibrium quantum field theory combined with the non-perturbative Hartree approximation. In addition to a general…
Detailed analyses of the WMAP data indicate possible oscillatory features in the primordial curvature perturbation, which moreover appears to be suppressed beyond the present Hubble radius. Such deviations from the usual inflationary…
We study the perspectives to extract information about the microphysical parameters that governed the reheating process after cosmic inflation from CMB data. We identify conditions under which the inflaton coupling to other fields can be…
We study the dynamics and perturbations during inflation and reheating in a multi-field model where a second scalar field $\chi$ is nonminimally coupled to the scalar curvature $(\frac12 \xi R\chi^2$). When $\xi$ is positive, the usual…
We show that double inflation is naturally realized in K\"ahler moduli inflation, which is caused by moduli associated with string compactification. We find that there is a small coupling between the two inflatons which leads to…
The observed power spectrum of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) is consistent with inflationary cosmology, which predicts a nearly scale-invariant power spectrum of quantum fluctuations of the inflaton field as they exit the Hubble…
Thermal fluctuations provide the main source of large scale density perturbations in warm inflationary models of the early universe. For the first time, general results are obtained for the power spectrum in the case when the friction…
We study reheating in $\alpha$-attractor models of inflation in which the inflaton couples to other scalars or fermions. We show that the parameter space contains viable regions in which the inflaton couplings to radiation can be determined…
The decoherence of quantum fluctuations into classical perturbations during inflation is discussed. A simple quantum mechanical argument, using a spatial particle wavefunction rather than a field description, shows that observable…
The recent Planck results and future releases on the horizon present a key opportunity to address a fundamental question in inflationary cosmology of whether primordial density perturbations have a quantum or thermal origin, i.e. whether…