Related papers: Testing inflationary consistency relations by the …
Data on the cosmic microwave background (CMB) are discriminating between different models of inflation, disfavoring simple monomial potentials whilst being consistent with models whose predictions resemble those of the Starobinsky $R + R^2$…
We investigate the implications for inflation of the detection of B-modes polarization in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) by BICEP2. We show that the hypothesis of primordial origin of the measurement is only favored by the first four…
The curl-modes of Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) polarization probe horizon-scale primordial gravitational waves related to inflation. A significant source of confusion is expected from a lensing conversion of polarization related to…
We show that next generation Cosmic Microwave Background experiments will be capable of the first ever measurement of the inflaton coupling to other particles, opening a new window to probe the connection between cosmic inflation and…
Observational consequences of inflationary cosmology in the holographic dual of the Randall-Sundrum type II braneworld scenario, as motivated by the AdS/CFT correspondence, are investigated. High energy corrections to the standard…
Probing correlations among short and long-wavelength cosmological fluctuations is known to be decisive for deepening the current understanding of inflation at the microphysical level. Spectral distortions of the CMB can be caused by…
Natural inflation is a well-motivated model for the early universe in which an inflaton potential of the pseudo-Nambu-Goldstone form, $V(\phi) = \Lambda^4[1 + \cos{(\phi/f)}]$, can naturally drive a cosmic accelerated epoch. This paper…
The polarization of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) provides a plethora of information about the early universe. Most notably, gravitational waves from the Inflationary epoch (the leading explanation of the origin of the universe)…
We study the auto-correlation function of CMB polarization anisotropies and their cross correlation with temperature fluctuations as probe of the causal structure of the universe. Because polarization is generated at the last scattering…
We extend our previous work on the cosmology of Coleman-de Luccia bubble collisions. Within a set of approximations we calculate the effects on the cosmic microwave background (CMB) as seen from inside a bubble which has undergone such a…
We show that models of new particle physics containing massless pseudoscalar fields super-weakly coupled to photons can be very efficiently probed with CMB polarization anisotropies. The stochastic pseudoscalar fluctuations generated during…
Slow-roll inflation generically makes several predictions: a flat Universe, primordial adiabatic density perturbations, and a stochastic gravity-wave background. Each inflation model will further predict specific relations between the…
Multi-field models of inflation typically assume that interactions between particles can be treated perturbatively. Strongly-coupled models provide an intriguing alternative and may offer novel inflationary phenomenology. We study the…
Inflation has been the driving idea in cosmology for two decades and is a pillar of the New Cosmology. The inflationary paradigm has now passed its first round of significant tests, with two of its three basics predictions confirmed at…
In this paper, we explore the power of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) polarization (E-mode) data to corroborate four potential anomalies in CMB temperature data: the lack of large angular-scale correlations, the alignment of the…
The eternal inflation scenario predicts that our observable universe resides inside a single bubble embedded in a vast inflating multiverse. We present the first observational tests of eternal inflation, performing a search for cosmological…
Inflation as the leading paradigm depicting the very early universe physics could leave imprints on the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation. Using currently available CMB observations, we give the tightest constraints on inflation…
The recent measurements of the power spectrum of Cosmic Microwave Background anisotropies are consistent with the simplest inflationary scenario and big bang nucleosynthesis constraints. However, these results rely on the assumption of a…
We use the most recent cosmic microwave background (CMB) data to perform a Bayesian statistical analysis and discuss the observational viability of inflationary models with a non-minimal coupling,~$\xi$, between the inflaton field and the…
Recent measurements of the temperature field of Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) provide tantalising evidence for violation of Statistical Isotropy (SI) that constitutes a fundamental tenet of contemporary cosmology. CMB space based…