Related papers: A Meandering Inflaton
The inflationary paradigm is an important cornerstone of the concordance cosmological model. However, standard inflation cannot fully address the transition from an early homogeneous and isotropic stage, to another one lacking such…
The inflationary paradigm enjoys a very wide acceptance in the cosmological community, due in large part to the fact that it is said to "naturally account" for a nearly scale independent power primordial spectrum of fluctuations which is in…
Higher-form flux that extends in all 3+1 dimensions of spacetime is a source of positive vacuum energy that can drive meta-stable eternal inflation. If the flux also threads compact extra dimensions, the spontaneous nucleation of a bubble…
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…
We discuss some model-independent implications of embedding (aligned) axionic inflation in string theory. As a consequence of string theoretic duality symmetries the pure cosine potentials of natural inflation are replaced by modular…
Dynamics of the inflaton scalar field oscillating around a minimum of the singular potentials in the expanding Universe is investigated. Asymptotic formulas are obtained describing the cosmological expansion at the late times. The problem…
The background evolution in two-field inflation can feature two distinct stages, corresponding to the evolution along two successive field directions. When the second stage occurs at a significantly lower energy scale, the inflationary…
Inflation has been the leading early universe scenario for two decades, and has become an accepted element of the successful `cosmic concordance' model. However, there are many puzzling features of the resulting theory. It requires both…
We propose a novel scenario of primordial inflation in which the inflaton goes through a spiral motion starting from around the top of a symmetry breaking potential. We show that, even though inflation takes place for a field value much…
I present a brief review of astro-ph/0406099, which argues that there is a limit on the number of efolds of inflation which are observable in a universe which undergoes an eternally accelerated expansion in the future. Such an acceleration…
When cosmic strings are formed during inflation, they regrow to reach a scaling regime, leaving distinct imprints on the stochastic gravitational wave background (SGWB). Such signatures, associated with specific primordial features, can be…
We examine a scalar-tensor model of gravity that is globally scale-invariant. When adapted to a spatially flat Robertson-Walker metric, the equations of motion describe a dynamical system that flows from an unstable de Sitter space to a…
We consider a more general initial condition satisfying the minimal uncertainty relationship. We calculate the power spectrum of a simple model in inflationary cosmology. The results depend on perturbations generated below a fundamental…
We study the CMB observables in axion monodromy inflation. These well-motivated scenarios for inflation in string theory have monomial potentials over super-Planckian field ranges, with superimposed sinusoidal modulations from instanton…
We show that there are inflationary models for which perturbations in the energy momentum tensor, which are of second order in the scalar field, cannot be neglected. We first specify the conditions under which the usual first order…
The first year of observations by the Planck satellite mission shows that the cosmic microwave background (CMB) fluctuations are consistent with gaussian statistics in the primordial perturbations, a key prediction of the simplest models of…
In the framework of Born-Infeld inspired gravity theories, which deviates from General Relativity (GR) in the high curvature regime, we discuss the viability of Cosmic Inflation without scalar fields. For energy densities higher than the…
Chain inflation takes place in the string theory landscape as the universe tunnels rapidly through a series of ever lower energy vacua such as may be characterized by quantized changes in four form fluxes. The string landscape may be well…
In inflationary scenarios with more than one scalar field, inflation may proceed even if each of the individual fields has a potential too steep for that field to sustain inflation on its own. We show that scalar fields with exponential…
Cosmic inflation provides a window to the highest energy densities accessible in nature, far beyond those achievable in any realistic terrestrial experiment. Theoretical insights into the inflationary era and its observational probes may…