Related papers: Large Primordial Trispectra in General Single Fiel…
In single field inflationary models, preheating refers to the phase that immediately follows inflation, but precedes the epoch of reheating. During this phase, the inflaton typically oscillates at the bottom of its potential and gradually…
Soft limits of $N$-point correlation functions, in which one wavenumber is much smaller than the others, play a special role in constraining the physics of inflation. Anisotropic sources such as a vector field during inflation generate…
We provide an update on five relatively well motivated inflationary models in which the inflaton is a Standard Model singlet scalar field. These include i) the textbook quadratic and quartic potential models but with additional couplings of…
Inflationary models predict a correlation between primordial density perturbations (scalar metric perturbations) and gravitational waves (tensor metric perturbations) in the form of a scalar-scalar-tensor three-point correlation, or…
We report first study of complex field inflation. Although understood as a specific two-field inflation, a complex field inflation is able to make more robust model predictions on primordial curvature perturbation. Explicitly we discuss the…
We investigate the observational signatures of many-field inflation and present analytic expressions for the spectral index as a function of the prior. For a given prior we employ the central limit theorem and the horizon crossing…
We calculate the perturbed action, at second and third order, for a massive three-form field minimally coupled to gravity, and use it to explore the observational predictions of three-form inflation. One intriguing result is that the value…
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 present a model of inflation in which the inflaton field is charged under a triplet of $U(1)$ gauge fields. The model enjoys an internal $O(3)$ symmetry supporting the isotropic FRW solution. With an appropriate coupling between the…
We study inflection point inflation using Singularity Theory, which relates degenerate critical points of functions to their local behavior. This approach illuminates universal features of small-field models and gives analytic control over…
We derive semi-analytic formulae for the local bispectrum and trispectrum in general two-field inflation and provide a simple geometric recipe for building observationally allowed models with observable non-Gaussianity. We use the \delta N…
We compare the standard single scalar field inflationary predictions with those of an inflationary phase driven by a tachyon field. A slow-roll formalism is defined for tachyon inflation and we derive the spectra of scalar and tensor…
Effects of heavy fields on primordial spectra of curvature perturbations are discussed in inflationary models with a sudden turning trajectory. When heavy fields are excited after the sudden turn and oscillate around the bottom of the…
Liouville gravity can be used to precisely model features of 3+1 dimensional cosmology in a simplified 1+1d setting. We study primordial fluctuations in a generally covariant extension of Liouville theory, in the context of single field…
Bayesian inference techniques are used to investigate situations where an additional light scalar field is present during inflation and reheating. This includes (but is not limited to) curvaton-type models. We design a numerical pipeline…
For very general scalar-field theories in which the equations of motion are at second-order, we evaluate the three-point correlation function of primordial scalar perturbations generated during inflation. We show that the shape of…
We calculate the scalar gravitational and matter perturbations in the context of slow-roll inflation with multiple scalar fields, that take values on a (curved) manifold, to first order in slow roll. For that purpose a basis for these…
We study the impact of (generalized) cuscuton models on standard single scalar field inflation. Generalized cuscuton models are characterized by spatial covariant gravity where a scalar degree of freedom is made non dynamical, and there are…
Forthcoming missions probing the absolute intensity of the CMB are expected to be able to measure spectral distortions, which are deviations from its blackbody distribution. As cosmic inflation can induce spectral distortions, these…
We compare the effects of local features (LF) and branch features (BF) of the inflaton potential on the spectrum of primordial perturbations. We show that LF affect the spectrum in a narrow range of scales while BF produce a step between…