Related papers: Nonlocal Inflation
In this paper we show that certain types of cosmological brane configurations may induce topological inflation. In generic models for topological inflation, there is a strict bound for the potential of the inflaton field. Naively, it seems…
We show that the scale of the inflationary potential may be the electroweak scale or even lower, while still generating an acceptable spectrum of primordial density perturbations. Thermal effects readily lead to the initial conditions…
This is a version of the author's Ph.D. thesis. The methods of effective field theory are used to study generic theories of inflation with a single inflaton field and to perform a general analysis of the associated non-Gaussianities. We…
We present a model of slow-roll inflation in the context of effective Supergravities arising from string theories. The uplifting of the potential (to generate dS or Minkowski vacua) is provided by the D-term associated to an anomalous U(1),…
We consider gravitational wave production during inflation in type IIB string theory, and the possibility of observable gravitational waves in small field inflation. We show that the gauge field excitations on a set of coincident D7 branes,…
We study the conditions needed to have an early epoch of inflationary expansion with a potential coming from IIB superstring theory with fluxes involving two moduli fields. The phenomenology of this potential is different from the usual…
We study models of modular inflation of the form expected to arise from low energy effective actions of superstring theories. We argue on general grounds that the most likely models of modular slow-roll inflation are small field models in…
In this paper we consider inflation as a probe of new physics near the string or Planck scale. We discuss how new physics can be captured by the choice of vacuum, and how this leads to modifications of the primordial spectrum as well as the…
I summarize recent work on (1) constraining spike-like features in the cosmic microwave background and large scale structure; (2) nonstandard Friedmann equation in stabilized warped 6D brane cosmology, with applications to inflation; and…
Thermal inflation was proposed as a mechanism to dilute the density of cosmological moduli. Thermal inflation is driven by a complex scalar field possessing a large vacuum expectation value and a very flat potential, called a `flaton'. Such…
When energy is not conserved, imprints of new physics on observable cosmology might not follow the rules of local effective actions. By capturing dissipative and diffusive effects, open effective field theories account for the possibly…
Despite its central role in modern cosmology, doubts are often expressed as to whether cosmological inflation is really a falsifiable theory. We distinguish two facets of inflation, one as a theory of initial conditions for the hot big bang…
In inflationary cosmology, the form of the potential is still an open problem. In this work, second-order effects of the inflationary potential are evaluated and related to the known formula for the primordial perturbations at a wide range…
We reconsider the problems of cosmological inflation in effective supergravity theories. A singlet field in a hidden sector is demonstrated to yield an acceptable inflationary potential, without fine tuning. In the simplest such model, the…
We describe several different regimes which are possible in inflationary cosmology. The simplest one is inflation without self-reproduction of the universe. In this scenario the universe is not stationary. The second regime, which exists in…
In the context of supersymmetric models, we analyze the production of topological defects at the end of inflation driven by a conjugate pair of inflaton fields which are non-singlets under the continuous symmetry group of the theory. We…
Even though the chaotic inflation is one of the most popular inflation models for its simple dynamics and compelling resolutions to the initial condition problems, its realization in supergravity has been considered a challenging task. We…
In this work, we construct an explicit string motivated example of three-field inflation in a related, yet distinct from, the recently discovered perturbative large volume scenario (pLVS). Contrary to the usual constructions, in this set…
In spite of its great phenomenological success, current models of scalar field-driven inflation suffer from important unresolved conceptual issues. New fundamental physics will be required to address these questions. String theory is a…
We consider the eternal inflation scenario of the slow-roll/chaotic type with the additional element of an objective collapse of the wave function. The incorporation of this new agent to the traditional inflationary setting might represent…