Related papers: Strong Coupling Problem with Time-Varying Sound Sp…
In a multi-field/fluid cosmological system consisting of a number of minimally coupled canonical scalar fields, non-canonical scalar fields and barotropic perfect fluids, we introduce a new definition of effective speed of sound of the…
We study the inflationary gravitational wave background induced by Abelian gauge fields generated by non-minimal kinetic and axial couplings to the inflaton. We show that, up to slow-roll corrections, for coupling functions that share the…
The curvaton scenario for the generation of the cosmological curvature perturbation on large scales represents an alternative to the standard slow-roll scenario of inflation in which the observed density perturbations are due to…
Curvature perturbations with short wavelengths exit the Hubble horizon when the universe may contain a thermal plasma in addition to an inflaton field that drives its expansion. We solve the corresponding fluctuation-dissipation dynamics at…
Inflationary and bouncing scenarios are two frameworks that provide the mechanism to overcome the horizon problem as well as generate the primordial perturbations. In this work, we investigate the conservation of perturbations in…
We develop a theory of self-resonance after inflation. We study a large class of models involving multiple scalar fields with an internal symmetry. For illustration, we often specialize to dimension 4 potentials, but we derive results for…
The fact that fast oscillating homogeneous scalar fields behave as perfect fluids in average and their intrinsic isotropy have made these models very fruitful in cosmology. In this work we will analyse the perturbations dynamics in these…
We consider a scenario where the strong coupling constant was changing in the early universe. We attribute this change to a variation in the colour charge within a Bekenstein-like model. Treating the vacuum gluon condensate $<G^2>$ as a…
We consider inflation in a universe with a positive cosmological constant and a nonminimally coupled scalar field, in which the field couples both quadratically and quartically to the Ricci scalar. When considered in the Einstein frame and…
Cosmological perturbations, originating in the quantum fluctuations of the fields that drive inflation, are observed to be nearly scale invariant at the largest scales. At smaller scales, however, perturbations are not severely constrained…
We derive general analytic formulae for the power spectrum and spectral index of the curvature perturbation produced during inflation driven by a multi-component inflaton field, up to the second order in the slow-roll approximation. We do…
We extend the matter bounce scenario to a more general theory in which the background dynamics and cosmological perturbations are generated by a $k$-essence scalar field with an arbitrary sound speed. When the sound speed is small, the…
We introduce a new set of flow parameters to describe the time dependence of the equation of state and the speed of sound in single field cosmological models. A scale invariant power spectrum is produced if these flow parameters satisfy…
We consider a cosmological scenario in which a scale-invariant spectrum of curvature perturbations is generated by a rapidly-evolving equation of state on a slowly expanding background. This scenario generalizes the "adiabatic ekpyrotic"…
We investigate the effects of couplings between curvature and isocurvature perturbations before and around horizon-crossings during cosmological inflation. We consider a generalized two-field inflation model, in which the non-canonical…
The spatial curvature of the universe is not yet known. Even though at present the Universe is very close to being essentially flat and most signatures of curvature appear to have been diluted by inflation, if the number of e-foldings…
We examine the effective theory of single-field inflation in the limit where the scalar perturbations propagate with a small speed of sound. In this case the non-linearly realized time-translation symmetry of the Lagrangian implies large…
With an energy scale that can be as high as $10^{14}\,{\rm GeV}$, inflation may provide a unique probe of high-energy physics. Both scalar and tensor fluctuations generated during this early accelerated expansion contain crucial information…
We generalize the cosmological duality between inflation and cyclic contraction under the interchange $a \leftrightarrow H$ to the case of non-canonical scalar field theories with varying speed of sound. The single duality in the canonical…
We study the inflationary phenomenology of a non-minimally coupled Einstein Gauss-Bonnet gravity theory, in the presence of a scalar potential, under the condition that the gravitational wave speed of the primordial gravitational waves is…