Related papers: The moduli problem at the perturbative level
We study the evolution of perturbations during the domination and decay of a massive particle species whose mass and decay rate are allowed to depend on the expectation value of a light scalar field. We specialize in the case where the…
We investigate the possibility that the Universe may inflate due to moduli fields, corresponding to flat directions of supersymmetry, lifted by supergravity corrections. Using a hybrid-type potential we obtain a two-stage inflationary…
We show that the cosmological abundance of string axions is much smaller than naive estimates if the Hubble scale of inflation, $H_{\rm inf}$, is sufficiently low (but can still be much higher than the axion masses) and if the inflation…
We investigate the spectrum of gravitational waves arising from primordial inflation in the presence of a string-theoretical higher curvature correction, specifically, the Gauss-Bonnet coupling term for the inflaton (modulus) field. We show…
Observable primordial tensor modes in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) would point to a high scale of inflation $H_{I}$. If the scale of Peccei-Quinn (PQ) breaking $f_a$ is greater than $\frac{H_{I}}{2\pi}$, CMB constraints on…
Light new vector bosons can be produced gravitationally through quantum fluctuations during inflation; if these particles are feebly coupled and cosmologically metastable, they can account for the observed dark matter abundance. However, in…
The observed dark matter abundance in the Universe can be fully accounted for by a minimally coupled spectator scalar field that was light during inflation and has sufficiently strong self-coupling. In this scenario, dark matter was…
It has been shown that the longitudinal mode of a massive vector boson can be produced by inflationary fluctuations and account for the dark matter content of the Universe. In this work we examine the possibility of instead producing the…
The reheating phase after inflation is one of the least observationally constrained epochs in the evolution of the Universe. The forthcoming gravitational wave observatories will enable us to constrain at least some of the non-standard…
We study the phenomenon of gravitational particle production as applied to a scalar spectator field in the context of $\alpha$-attractor inflation. Assuming that the scalar has a minimal coupling to gravity, we calculate the abundance of…
Inflation universally produces classical almost scale free Gaussian inhomogeneities of any light scalars. Assuming the coupling constants at the time of inflation depend on some light moduli fields, we encounter the generation of modulated…
Typically the fluctuations generated from a decaying field during inflation do not contribute to the large scale structures. In this paper we provide an example where it is possible for a field which slowly rolls and then decays during…
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…
Dark matter may be coupled to dark radiation: light degrees of freedom that mediate forces between dark sector particles. Cosmological constraints favor dark radiation that is colder than Standard Model radiation. In models with fixed…
We study the cosmological inflation from the viewpoint of the moduli stabilization. We study the scenario that the superpotential has a large value during the inflation era enough to stabilize moduli, but it is small in the true vacuum.…
We show that dark matter abundance and the inflationary scale $H$ could be intimately related. Standard Model extensions with Higgs mediated couplings to new physics typically contain extra scalars displaced from vacuum during inflation. If…
We perform a Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) analysis of a simple yet generic multifield inflation model characterized by two scalar fields coupled to each other and nonminimally coupled to gravity, fit to Planck 2018 cosmic microwave…
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…
High-scale string inflationary models are in well-known tension with low-energy supersymmetry. A promising solution involves models where the inflaton is the volume of the extra dimensions so that the gravitino mass relaxes from large…
The longitudinal mode of a massive vector field, generated during inflation, offers a well-motivated and phenomenologically rich candidate for dark matter. We show that a rapid variation in the mass of the vector boson, occurring during a…