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We investigate whether inflation in the early universe can be induced by an extra component of a five-dimensional ${\rm U(1)}$ gauge field in the Randall-Sundrum warped spacetime or not. We show that an effective potential obtained by…
A particular compensation-type solution of the main cosmological constant problem has been proposed recently, with two massless vector fields dynamically canceling an arbitrary cosmological constant \Lambda. The naive expectation is that…
A particular extension of Einstein's General Relativity up to and including quartic terms in the curvature tensor is minimal in the sense that it has a unique maximally symmetric vacuum and only a massless spin-2 excitation in its spectrum…
We study the impact of modifying the vector sector of gravity on the CMB polarization. We employ the Einstein-aether theory as a concrete example. The Einstein-aether theory admits dynamical vector perturbations generated during inflation,…
In this paper, we explicitly calculate the aether-like corrections for the electromagnetic field in the case when the space-time involves an extra compact spatial dimension besides of usual four dimensions. Our methodology is based on an…
We show the existence of a general mechanism by which heavy scalar fields can be destabilized during inflation, relying on the fact that the curvature of the field space manifold can dominate the stabilizing force from the potential and…
It was recently proposed that a field theory cannot be consistent with quantum gravity if it allows a mode shorter than the Planck length to exit the Hubble horizon. This is called the Trans-Planckian Censorship Conjecture (TCC). We discuss…
We discuss inflation in models with large extra dimensions, driven by a bulk scalar field. The brane inflaton is then a single effective field, obtained from the bulk scalar field by scaling. The self interaction terms of the effective…
We present a new mechanism for slow-roll inflation based on higher dimensional supersymmetric gauge theory compactified to four dimensions with twisted (supersymmetry breaking) boundary conditions. These boundary conditions lead to a…
The leading account of several salient observable features of our universe today is provided by the theory of cosmic inflation. But an important and thus far intractable question is whether inflation is generic, or whether it is finely…
Generically, the gravitational-wave or tensor-mode contribution to the primordial curvature spectrum of inflation is tiny if the field-range of the inflaton is much smaller than the Planck scale. We show that this pessimistic conclusion is…
We consider small-field models which invoke the usual framework for the effective field theory, and large-field models which go beyond that. Present and future possibilities for discriminating between the models are assessed, on the…
The Eisenhart lift allows to formulate the dynamics of a scalar field in a potential as pure geodesic motion in a curved field-space manifold involving an additional fictitious vector field. Making use of the formalism in the context of…
We consider spatially averaged inhomogeneous universe models and argue that, already in the absence of sources, an effective scalar field arises through foliating and spatially averaging inhomogeneous geometrical curvature invariants of the…
We consider a Lorentz-violating theory of gravity where the aether vector is taken to be nondynamical. This "ponderable aether theory" is almost the same as Einstein-aether theory (where the aether vector is dynamical), but involves…
Non-abelian discrete gauge symmetries can provide the inflaton with a flat potential even when one takes into account gravitational strength effects. The discreteness of the symmetries also provide special field values where inflation can…
During hybrid inflation, the slowly-rolling inflaton field has a significant coupling to the trigger field which is responsible for most of the potential. Barring a fine-tuned accidental cancellation, this coupling induces a minimal…
We consider the effects of inhomogeneous initial conditions in both the scalar field profile and the extrinsic curvature on different inflationary models. In particular, we compare the robustness of small field inflation to that of large…
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…
We study the primordial perturbations generated during a stage of single-field inflation in Einstein-aether theories. Quantum fluctuations of the inflaton and aether fields seed long wavelength adiabatic and isocurvature scalar…