Related papers: Identifying the inflaton with primordial gravitati…
The Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) detection of microwave background anisotropies may contain a component due to gravitational waves generated by inflation. It is shown that the gravitational waves from inflation might be seen using…
Many inflationary theories introduce new scalar, vector, or tensor degrees of freedom that may then affect the generation of primordial density perturbations. Here we show how to search a galaxy (or 21-cm) survey for the imprint of…
We study the scalar and tensor perturbations generated by the fragmentation of the inflaton condensate into oscillons or transients after inflation, using nonlinear classical lattice simulations. Without including the backreaction of metric…
The increasingly stringent observational bounds on primordial gravitational waves strongly constrain inflationary model building, favoring scenarios that predict highly suppressed tensor perturbations. While many viable constructions rely…
If the beginning of inflation is defined at the moment when the vacuum energy of the inflaton starts to dominate, the energy density of the other fields at that moment is (by definition) comparable to the inflaton. Although the fraction…
Inflation occurring at energy densities less than (10$^{14}$ GeV)$^4$ produces tensor perturbations too small to be measured by cosmological surveys. However, we show that it is possible to probe low scale inflation by measuring the mass of…
We study the evolution of gravitational waves through the preheating era that follows inflation. The oscillating inflaton drives parametric resonant growth of scalar field fluctuations, and although super-Hubble tensor modes are not…
We revisit alternative mechanisms of gravitational wave production during inflation and argue that they generically emit a non-negligible amount of scalar fluctuations. We find the scalar power is larger than the tensor power by a factor of…
Determining the energy scale of inflation is crucial to understand the nature of inflation in the early Universe. We place observational constraints on the energy scale of the observable part of the inflaton potential by combining the…
In this paper we study the behaviour of gravitational wave background (GWB) generated during inflation in the environment of the noncommutative field approach. From this approach we derive out one additive term, and then we find that the…
A fundamental prediction of inflation is a nearly scale-invariant spectrum of gravitational wave. The features of such a signal provide extremely important information about the physics of the early universe. In this paper, we focus on…
Stochastic gravitational wave backgrounds (SGWBs) receive increasing attention and provide a new possibility to directly probe the early Universe. In the preheating process at the end of inflation, parametric resonance can generate large…
Inflationary gravitational waves, behaving as additional radiation in the Early Universe, can increase the effective number of relativistic species ($N_{\rm eff}$) by a further correction that depends on the integrated energy-density in…
We study initial conditions for inflation in scenarios where the inflaton potential has a plateau shape. Such models are those most favored by Planck data and can be obtained in a large number of model classes. As a representative example,…
We propose a testable alternative to inflation directly built in a very general class of ultraviolet complete theories of quantum gravity enjoying Weyl invariance. After the latter is spontaneously broken, logarithmic quantum corrections to…
This is a review of models of inflation and of their predictions for the primordial non-Gaussianity in the density perturbations which are thought to be at the origin of structures in the Universe. Non-Gaussianity emerges as a key…
Tensor non-Gaussianity represents an important future probe of the physics of inflation. Inspired by recent works, we elaborate further on the possibility of significant primordial tensor non-Gaussianities sourced by extra fields during…
The most conventional mechanism for gravitational waves (gw) production during inflation is the amplification of vacuum metric fluctuations. In this case the gw production can be uniquely related to the inflationary expansion rate $H$. For…
A large class of quintessential inflationary models, recently proposed by Peebles and Vilenkin, leads to post-inflationary phases whose effective equation of state is stiffer than radiation. The expected gravitational waves logarithmic…
The appearance of peaks in various primordial fluctuation Fourier power spectra is a generic prediction of the inflationary scenario. We investigate whether future experiments, in particular the satellite experiment PLANCK, will be able to…