Related papers: A Meandering Inflaton
We study the possibility that inflation is driven by a scalar field together with a vector field minimally coupled to gravity. By assuming an effective potential that incorporates both fields into the action, we explore two distinct…
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…
Starting with a study of the cosmological solution to the Einstein equations for the internal spacetime of an extreme supermassive cosmic string kink, and by evaluating the probability measure for the formation of such a kink in…
In effective supergravity theories following from the superstring, a modulus field can quite naturally set the neccessary initial conditions for successful cosmological inflation to be driven by a hidden sector scalar field. The leading…
The continuous shift symmetry of axions is at the heart of several realizations of inflationary models. In particular, axion monodromy inflation aims at achieving super-Planckian field ranges for the inflaton in the context of string…
The curvaton scenario predicts an almost scale-invariant spectrum of perturbations in most inflation models. We consider the possibility that renormalisable phi^4 or Planck scale-suppressed non-renormalisable curvaton potential terms may…
The nature of the scalar field responsible for the cosmological inflation, the \qo{inflaton}, is found to be rooted in the most fundamental concept of the Weyl's differential geometry: the parallel displacement of vectors in curved…
Recently we introduced an inflationary setup in which the inflaton fields are matrix valued scalar fields with a generic quartic potential, M-flation. In this work we study the landscape of various inflationary models arising from…
The usual description of inflationary fluctuations uses the framework of quantum field theory (QFT) in curved spacetime, in which quantum fluctuations are superimposed on a classical background spacetime. Even for large fluctuations, such…
We study an inflationary scenario where thermal inflation is followed by fast-roll inflation. This is a rather generic possibility based on the effective potentials of spontaneous symmetry breaking in the context of particle physics models.…
We consider the effective evolution of a phenomenological model from FLRW supersymmetric quantum cosmology with a scalar field. The scalar field acts as a clock and inflaton. We examine a family of simple superpotentials that produce an…
Inflation in cosmology is a specific stage preceding the Big Bang, aimed at solving both old background problems and new perturbation issues. Single-field inflation is a candidate to illustrate the picture of the initial universe, and…
The inflationary scenarios suggested by the duality properties of string cosmology in the Brans-Dicke (or String) frame are shown to correspond to accelerated contraction (deflation) when Weyl-transformed to the Einstein frame. We point out…
Cosmological perturbations, originating in the quantum fluctuations of the fields that drive inflation, are observed to be nearly scale invariant at the largest scales. At smaller scales, however, perturbations are not severely constrained…
The inflaton potential in four-dimensional theory is rather arbitrary, and fine-tuning is required generically. By contrast, inflation in the brane world scenario has the interesting feature that the inflaton potential is motivated from…
We consider the spectrum of primordial fluctuations produced by inflationary models where the inflaton potential is the sum of two exponential terms. A wide range of spectra result, with the only constraint being that the scalar spectrum…
An epoch of accelerated expansion, or inflation, in the early universe solves several cosmological problems. While there are many models of inflation only recently has it become possible to discriminate between some of the models using…
The very basics of cosmological inflation are discussed. We derive the equations of motion for the inflaton field, introduce the slow-roll parameters, and present the computation of the inflationary perturbations and their connection to the…
Solid inflation is a cosmological model where inflation is driven by fields which enter the Lagrangian in the same way as body coordinates of a solid matter enter the equation of state, spontaneously breaking spatial translational and…
The so-called "trans-Planckian" problem of inflation may be evaded by positing that modes come into existence only when they became "cis-Planckian" by virtue of expansion. However, this would imply that for any mode a new random realization…