Related papers: M-flation: Inflation From Matrix Valued Scalar Fie…
If cosmic inflation was driven by an electrically neutral scalar field stable on cosmological time scales, the field necessarily constitutes all or part of dark matter (DM). We study this possibility in a scenario where the inflaton field…
Inflationary models driven by a large number of axion fields are discussed in the context of type IIB compactifications with N=1 supersymmetry. The inflatons arise as the scalar modes of the R-R two-forms evaluated on vanishing two-cycles…
A simple realization of inflation consists of adding the following operators to the Einstein-Hilbert action: (partial phi)^2, lambda phi^4, and xi phi^2 R, with xi a large non-minimal coupling. Recently there has been much discussion as to…
We propose a scalar inflationary potential as $V(\phi)=M^4\phi^{2n-2}(\phi^{2n}+m^{2n})^{1/n-1}$. This potential is similar to the shaft inflation one. However, they satisfy the $Z_2$ symmetry for all $n$. The potential may come from the…
In this article, we study in detail the linear dynamics and cubic interactions for any number $N_\mathrm{field}$ of scalar fields during inflation, directly in terms of the observable curvature perturbation $\zeta$ and $N_\mathrm{field}-1$…
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…
I discuss folded inflation, an inflationary model embedded in a multi-dimensional scalar potential, such as the stringy landscape. During folded inflation, the field point evolves along a path that turns several corners in the potential.…
We investigate the inflationary expansion of the universe induced by higher curvature corrections in M-theory. The inflationary evolution of the geometry is discussed in ref.[1], thus we succeed to analyse metric perturbations around the…
The mechanism of the initial inflation of the universe is based on gravitationally coupled scalar fields $\phi$. Various scenarios are distinguished by the choice of an {\it effective self--interaction potential} $U(\phi)$ which simulates a…
We investigate models in which the inflaton emerges as a composite field of a four dimensional, strongly interacting and nonsupersymmetric gauge theory featuring purely fermionic matter. We show that it is possible to obtain successful…
Inflation is studied in the context of induced gravity (IG) $\gamma \sigma^2 R$, where $R$ is the Ricci scalar, $\sigma$ a scalar field and $\gamma$ a dimensionless constant, and diverse symmetry-breaking potentials $V(\sigma)$ are…
Inflection-point inflation is an interesting possibility to realize a successful slow-roll inflation when inflation is driven by a single scalar field with its initial value below the Planck mass ($\phi_I \lesssim M_{Pl}$). In order for a…
We study inflationary potentials in the framework of superstring theories. Successful inflation may occur due to chiral fields, but only after the dilaton and moduli are stabilized. This is achieved by demanding an S-duality invariant…
We investigate the effects of large inhomogeneities in both the inflaton field and its momentum. We find that in general, large kinetic perturbations reduce the number of e-folds of inflation. In particular, we observe that inflationary…
We compute the amplitude of the non-Gaussianities in inflationary models with multiple, uncoupled scalar fields. This calculation thus applies to all models of assisted inflation, including N-flation, where inflation is driven by multiple…
We discuss the phenomenology of the minimal inflation scenario. We concentrate on two aspects: inflationary trajectories and particle production. Our findings can be summarized in two main results: first, that inflationary trayectories that…
The scalar field theory of cosmological inflation constitutes nowadays one of the preferred scenarios for the physics of the early universe. In this paper we aim at studying the inflationary universe making use of a numerical lattice…
We discuss the hybrid inflation model where the inflaton field is nonminimally coupled to gravity. In the Jordan frame, the potential contains $\phi^4$ term as well as terms in the original hybrid inflation model. In our model, inflation…
We revisit the renormalizable polynomial inflection point model of inflation, focusing on the small field scenario which can be treated fully analytically. In particular, the running of the spectral index is predicted to be $\alpha = -1.43…
We explore whether multifield inflationary models make unambiguous predictions for fundamental cosmological observables. Focusing on $N$-quadratic inflation, we numerically evaluate the full perturbation equations for models with 2, 3, and…