Related papers: UV-protected (Natural) Inflation: Primordial Fluct…
In warm inflation models there is the requirement of generating large dissipative couplings of the inflaton with radiation, while at the same time, not de-stabilising the flatness of the inflaton potential due to radiative corrections. One…
We calculate the bispectrum of the gravitational field fluctuations generated during warm inflation, where dissipation of the vacuum potential during inflation is the mechanism for structure formation. The bispectrum is non--zero because of…
We examine cosmological perturbations in a dynamical theory of inflation in which an Abelian gauge field couples directly to the inflaton, breaking conformal invariance. When the coupling between the gauge field and the inflaton takes a…
We analyse models of inflation in which isocurvature perturbations present during inflation are converted into the primordial curvature perturbation during instant preheating. This can be due to an asymmetry between the fields present…
Gauge-flation is a recently proposed model in which inflation is driven solely by a non-Abelian gauge field thanks to a specific higher order derivative operator. The nature of the operator is such that it does not introduce ghosts. We…
We study an extension of the natural inflation model comprising a non-Abelian gauge sector coupled to the axion-inflaton kinetic term. We show how such non-minimal coupling serves as a source of friction for the rolling inflaton granting…
It is a longstanding desire of cosmologists, and particle physicists as well, to connect inflation to low energy physics, culminating, for instance, in what is known as Higgs inflation. The condition for the standard Higgs boson playing the…
If the recent measurement of B-mode polarization by BICEP2 is due to primordial gravitational waves, it implies that inflation was driven by energy densities at the GUT scale $M_{GUT} \sim 2\times 10^{16} GeV$. This favors single-field…
Supersymmetry plays a fundamental role in the radiative stability of many inflationary models. Spontaneous breaking of the symmetry inevitably leads to fields with masses of order the Hubble scale during inflation. When these fields couple…
We compute all N-point primordial curvature correlation functions from inflation at tree-level up to N of order ten or more depending on the choice of parameters. This is achieved for resonant inflationary models in which the inflaton…
We present a comprehensive study of primordial fluctuations generated from G-inflation, in which the inflaton Lagrangian is of the form $K(\phi, X)-G(\phi, X)\Box\phi$ with $X=-(\partial\phi)^2/2$. The Lagrangian still gives rise to…
We study the hybrid inflationary potential in a regime where the defect field is light, and more than 60 e-folds of accelerated expansion occur after the symmetry breaking transition. Using analytic and numerical techniques, we then…
In this PhD thesis, we investigate generic features of inflation which are strictly related to fundamental aspects of UV-physics scenarios, such as string theory or supergravity. After a short introduction to standard and inflationary…
For the models of inflation driven by the potential energy of an inflaton field $\phi$, the covariant Galileon Lagrangian $(\partial\phi)^2\Box \phi$ generally works to slow down the evolution of the field. On the other hand, if the…
The weak gravity conjecture applied for the aligned natural inflation indicates that generically there can be a modulation of the inflaton potential, with a period determined by sub-Planckian axion scale. We study the oscillations in the…
Correlated adiabatic and isocurvature perturbation modes are produced during inflation through an oscillation mechanism when extra scalar degrees of freedom other than the inflaton field are present. We show that this correlation…
In construction of an inflationary model, one usually assumes that the matter sector of the gravitational action is minimally coupled to the background. It means that the matter (inflaton) part of the action is coupled with the same metric…
We show, within the single-field inflationary paradigm, that a linear non-minimal interaction $\xi\,M_P\,\phi\,R$ between the inflaton field $\phi$ and the Ricci scalar $R$ can result in successful inflation that concludes with an efficient…
In the ``natural inflation'' model, the inflaton potential is periodic. We show that Planck scale physics may induce corrections to the inflaton potential, which is also periodic with a greater frequency. Such high frequency corrections…
We provide a detailed study of natural inflation with a periodic non-minimal coupling, which is a well-motivated inflationary model that admits an explicit UV completion. We demonstrate that this construction can satisfy the most recent…