Related papers: Influence on observation from IR divergence during…
Attempts at building an unified description of the strong, weak and electromagnetic interactions usually involve several stages of spontaneous symmetry breaking. We consider the effects of such symmetry breaking during an era of primordial…
We study multi-field Dirac-Born-Infeld (DBI) inflation models, taking into account the NS-NS and R-R bulk fields present in generic flux compactifications. We compute the second-order action, which governs the behaviour of linear…
We consider reheating in a class of asymptotically safe quantum field theories recently studied in \cite{Litim:2014uca, Litim:2015iea}. These theories allow for an inflationary phase in the very early universe. Inflation ends with a period…
With an energy scale that can be as high as $10^{14}\,{\rm GeV}$, inflation may provide a unique probe of high-energy physics. Both scalar and tensor fluctuations generated during this early accelerated expansion contain crucial information…
Heavy isocurvature fields may have a strong influence on the low energy dynamics of curvature perturbations during inflation, as long as the inflationary trajectory becomes non-geodesic in the multi-field target space (the landscape). If…
We consider cosmological perturbations caused by modulated inflaton velocity. During inflation, the inflaton motion is damped and the velocity is determined by the parameters such as couplings or masses that may depend on light…
Light scalars in inflationary spacetimes suffer from logarithmic infrared divergences at every order in perturbation theory. This corresponds to the scalar field values in different Hubble patches undergoing a random walk of quantum…
Multifield models of inflation with nonminimal couplings are in excellent agreement with the recent results from {\it Planck}. Across a broad range of couplings and initial conditions, such models evolve along an effectively single-field…
Using numerical solutions of the full Einstein field equations coupled to a scalar inflaton field in 3+1 dimensions, we study the conditions under which a universe that is initially expanding, highly inhomogeneous and dominated by gradient…
High-energy physics often motivates multi-field inflationary scenarios where stochastic effects play a crucial role. Peculiar to multi-field models, the noise-induced centrifugal force results in a longer duration of inflation depending on…
Dynamics of the inflaton is studied when it interacts with boson and fermion fields and in minimal supersymmetric models. This encompasses multifield inflation models, such as hybrid inflation, and typical reheating models. For much of the…
We discuss metric perturbations produced during a period of inflation in the early universe where two scalar fields evolve. The final scalar perturbation spectrum can be calculated in terms of the perturbed expansion along neighbouring…
The evolution of gauge invariant second-order scalar perturbations in a general single field inflationary scenario are presented. Different second order gauge invariant expressions for the curvature are considered. We evaluate…
The possibility that the scale-invariant inflationary spectrum may be modified due to the hidden assumptions about the Planck scale physics -- dubbed as trans-Planckian inflation -- has received considerable attention. To mimic the possible…
We introduce a simple string model of inflation, in which the inflaton field can take trans-Planckian values while driving a period of slow-roll inflation. This leads naturally to a realisation of large field inflation, inasmuch as the…
The dynamics of a single scalar field which describes a second order phase transition is considered taking into account the thermal effects in the high temperature limit. I conclude that thermal effects play a very important role during…
We analyze cosmological perturbations to the linear order in the context of inflation with an arbitrary number of scalar fields. The fields take values on a non-trivial manifold with a positive-definite metric and are non-minimally coupled…
Reheating is a transition era after the end of inflation, during which the inflaton is converted into the particles that populate the Universe at later times. No direct cosmological observables are normally traceable to this period of…
We study the power spectrum of super-Hubble fluctuations of an inflaton-like scalar field, the "system", coupled to another scalar field, the "environment" during de Sitter inflation. We obtain the reduced density matrix for the inflaton…
We show that dissipative effects have a significant impact on the evolution of cosmological scalar fields, leading to friction, entropy production and field fluctuations. We explicitly compute the dissipation coefficient for different…