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The physics of de Sitter space is essential to our understanding of our cosmological past, present, and future. It forms the foundation for the statistical predictions of inflation in terms of quantum vacuum fluctuations that are being…
An anthropic understanding of the cosmological constant requires that the vacuum energy at late time scans from one patch of the universe to another. If the vacuum energy during inflation also scans, the various patches of the universe…
We find numerical solutions of Einstein equations and scalar field equation for a global defect in higher dimensional spacetimes ($\geq 6$). We examine in detail the relation among the expansion rate $H$ and the symmetry-breaking scale…
A supersymmetric inflationary stage dominated by an $F$-term has the problem that the flatness of the potential is spoiled by supergravity corrections, that is the slow-roll parameter $\eta$ gets contributions of order unity. We show that…
A Gauss-Bonnet term naturally appears in the action for gravity when one considers the existence of space time with dimensions more than 1+3. A variety of inflationary models can be obtained within such a framework, once the scale factor…
Inflation may occur while rolling into the metastable supersymmetry-breaking vacuum of massive supersymmetric QCD. We explore the range of parameters in which slow-roll inflation and long-lived metastable supersymmetry breaking may be…
A wide variety of vacua, and their cosmological realization, may provide an explanation for the apparently anthropic choices of some parameters of particle physics and cosmology. If the probability on various parameters is weighted by…
A huge value of cosmological constant characteristic for the particle physics and the inflation of early Universe are inherently related to each other: one can construct a fine-tuned superpotential, which produces a flat potential of…
Inflation is often described through the dynamics of a scalar field, slow-rolling in a suitable potential. Ultimately, this inflaton must be identified as the expectation value of a quantum field, evolving in a quantum effective potential.…
We consider hidden sector supersymmetry breakdown in the strongly coupled heterotic $E_8\times E_8$ theory of Ho\v{r}ava and Witten. Using effective field theory methods in four dimensions, we can show that gravitational interactions induce…
We examine the embedding of dark energy in high energy models based upon supergravity and extend the usual phenomenological setting comprising an observable sector and a hidden supersymmetry breaking sector by including a third sector…
In supersymmetric grand unified theories, the gauge hierarchy achieved by a fine-tuning in the superpotential can be violated in the presence of soft breaking terms. We examine this problem in Einstein supergravity with hidden-sector…
We point out that the horizon problem encountered in standard text-books or review papers on cosmology is, in general, derived for world models based on Robertson-Walker line element where homogeneity and isotropy of the universe -- \`a la…
We consider inflation within a model framework where the Higgs boson arises as a pseudo-Goldstone boson associated with the breaking of a global symmetry at a scale significantly larger than the electroweak one. We show that in such a model…
We study the metric perturbations produced during inflation in models with two scalar fields evolving simultaneously. In particular, we emphasize how the large-scale curvature perturbation $\zeta$ on fixed energy density hypersurfaces may…
We examine the squeezed limit of the bispectrum when a light scalar with arbitrary non-derivative self-interactions is coupled to the inflaton. We find that when the hidden sector scalar is sufficiently light ($m\lesssim0.1\,H$), the…
We apply the criterion of finite naturalness to the limiting case of a generic heavy sector decoupled from the Standard Model. The sole and unavoidable exception to this decoupling arises from gravitational interactions. We demonstrate that…
We show the effects of supersymmetric higher derivative terms on inflation models in supergravity. The results show that such terms generically modify the effective kinetic coefficient of the inflaton during inflation if the cut off scale…
The scenario of constant-roll inflation is studied where the inflaton is a scalar field with modified kinetic term, known as non-canonical scalar field. This modification leads to some changes in the slow-roll parameters, and also by taking…
We consider the fate of the observable universe in the light of the discovery of a dark energy component to the cosmic energy budget. We extend results for a cosmological constant to a general dark energy component and examine the…