Related papers: Studies in Small Field Inflation
The BICEP2 observations, if confirmed, point to a high scale of inflation and large field excursions during the inflationary era. Non-compact string moduli spaces are a suggestive setting for these phenomena. While unlikely to be described…
We consider the torsional completion of gravity with spinor and scalar fields: we show how in this environment conditions of extreme symmetry or specific approximations imply the scalar field to be constant, so that slow-roll takes place…
In this work we study slow-roll inflation for a vector-tensor model with massive vector fields non-minimally coupled to gravity. The model under consideration has arbitrary parameters for each geometrical coupling. Taking into account a…
Slow-roll inflation is studied in theories where the inflaton field is conformally coupled to the Ricci scalar. In particular, the case of Higgs field inflation in the context of the noncommutative spectral action is analyzed. It is shown…
We present a mechanism for realizing hybrid inflation using two axion fields with a purely non-perturbatively generated scalar potential. The structure of scalar potential is highly constrained by the discrete shift symmetries of the…
We explore the inflationary phase of a scalar field with a kinetic term non-minimally coupled to gravity. We find that one of the slow-roll conditions is naturally consequence of the equation of motion of the scalar field. Thus, slow-roll…
The recently proposed Swampland Criteria aim to evade any (meta-)stable de Sitter constructions within String landscapes, making it difficult to accommodate accelerating phases, like dark energy domination and inflationary epoch, in…
We describe models of single-field inflation with small and sharp step features in the potential (and sound speed) of the inflaton field, in the context of the Effective Field Theory of Inflation. This approach allows us to study the…
We study multifield contributions to the scalar power spectrum in an ensemble of six-field inflationary models obtained in string theory. We identify examples in which inflation occurs by chance, near an approximate inflection point, and we…
Cosmological inflation gives a natural answer for a variety of cosmological questions, including the horizon problem, the flatness problem, and others. However, inflation yields new questions relating to the flatness of the inflaton…
We investigate the possibility of obtaining inflationary solutions of the slow roll type from a low energy Lagrangian coming from superstrings. The advantage of such an approach is that in these theories the scalar potential has only one…
We consider observational constraints and fine-tuning issues in a renormalizable model of inflection point inflation, with two independent parameters. We derive constraints on the parameter space of this model arising from the WMAP 7-year…
The calculation of scalar gravitational and matter perturbations during multiple-field inflation valid to first order in slow roll is discussed. These fields may be the coordinates of a non-trivial field manifold and hence have non-minimal…
We elaborate on a minimal inflation scenario based entirely on the general properties of supersymmetry breaking in supergravity models. We identify the inflaton as the scalar component of the Goldstino superfield. We write plausible…
The slow-roll field equations for the case of non-minimally coupled scalar fields are obtained in two ways: first using the direct generalization of slow-roll conditions in the minimal coupling case to non-minimal one; and, second,…
We propose a variant of hybrid inflation which is applicable in a wide class of supersymmetric grand unified models. The observed temperature perturbations of cosmic background radiation can be reproduced with natural values of the…
We consider low scale slow roll inflation driven by the gauge invariant flat directions {\bf udd} and {\bf LLe} of the Minimally Supersymmetric Standard Model at the vicinity of a saddle point of the scalar potential. We study the stability…
An important unsolved problem that affects practically all attempts to connect string theory to cosmology and phenomenology is how to distinguish effective field theories belonging to the string landscape from those that are not consistent…
We elucidate the counting of the relevant small parameters in inflationary perturbation theory. Doing this allows for an explicit delineation of the domain of validity of the semi-classical approximation to gravity used in the calculation…
We consider "new inflation" inflationary models at small fields, embedded in minimal ${\cal N}=1$ supergravity with a single chiral superfield. Imposing a period of inflation compatible with experiment severely restricts possible models,…