Related papers: Fast Computation of First-Order Feature-Bispectrum…
The next generation of cosmological observations will be sensitive to small deviations from a pure power law in the primordial power spectrum of the curvature perturbations. In the context of slow-roll inflation, these deviations are…
We introduce a class of first-order methods for smooth constrained optimization that are based on an analogy to non-smooth dynamical systems. Two distinctive features of our approach are that (i) projections or optimizations over the entire…
The spectrum of primordial fluctuations from inflation can be obtained using a mathematically controlled, and systematically extendable, uniform approximation. Closed-form expressions for power spectra and spectral indices may be found…
We develop an integral form for the bispectrum in general single-field inflation whose domain of validity includes models of inflation where the background evolution is not constrained to be slowly varying everywhere. Our integral form…
We study an inflationary model driven by a single minimally coupled standard kinetic term scalar field with a step in its mass modeled by an Heaviside step function. We present an analytical approximation for the mode function of the…
In view of cosmological parameters being measured to ever higher precision, theoretical predictions must also be computed to an equally high level of precision. In this work we investigate the impact on such predictions of relaxing some of…
We investigate all single-field, slow-roll inflationary models whose slow-roll parameters scale as 1/N in the limit of a large number of e-folds N. We proof that all such models belong to two universality classes, characterised by a single…
We extend the WKB method for the computation of cosmological perturbations during inflation beyond leading order and provide the power spectra of scalar and tensor perturbations to second order in the slow-roll parameters. Our method does…
Slow-roll inflation is studied as an effective field theory.We find as consistent form of the inflaton potential V(phi)=N M^4 w(phi/[sqrt{N}M_P]) where phi is the inflaton field, M the inflation energy scale, M_P the Planck mass, and N~50…
A model is developed in which the inflaton potential experiences a sudden small change in its second derivative (the effective mass of the inflaton). An exact treatment demonstrates that the resulting density perturbation has a quasi-flat…
We study the degeneracy of the primordial spectrum and bispectrum of the curvature perturbation in single field inflationary models with a class of features in the inflaton potential. The feature we consider is a discontinuous change in the…
The tensor fraction $r\simeq 0.16$ found by BICEP2 corresponds to a Hubble parameter $H\simeq 1.0\times 10^{14}\GeV$ during inflation. This has two implications for the (single-field) slow-roll inflation hypothesis. First, the inflaton…
We quantify the slow-roll corrections to primordial density perturbations arising from inflation driven by a four-dimensional scalar field with a monomial potential in a five-dimensional non-compact bulk spacetime. Although the difference…
In a previous paper I showed that a classical scalar potential with $V''/V \sim 1$ can be sufficiently flattened by quantum corrections to give rise to slow-roll inflation. In this paper I give a hybrid inflation implementation of that idea…
We present the model-independent studies of non attractor inflation in the context of effective field theory (EFT) of inflation. Within the EFT approach two independent branches of non-attractor inflation solutions are discovered in which a…
We calculate the power spectrum of curvature perturbations when the inflaton field is rolling over the top of a local maximum of a potential. We show that the evolution of the field can be decomposed into a late-time attractor, which is…
Inflation is often described through the dynamics of a scalar field, slow-rolling in a suitable potential. Ultimately, this inflaton must be identified as the expectation value of a quantum field, evolving in a quantum effective potential.…
The evolution of high order correlation functions of a test scalar field in arbitrary inflationary backgrounds is computed. Whenever possible, exact results are derived from quantum field theory calculations. Taking advantage of the fact…
In slow roll inflation, the running of the spectral tilt is generically proportional to the square of the deviation from scale invariance, $\alpha_s \propto (n_s-1)^2$, and it is therefore currently undetectable. We present a mechanism able…
The decrease of both the rolling speed of the inflaton and the sound speed of the curvature perturbations can amplify the curvature perturbations during inflation so as to generate a sizable amount of primordial black holes. In the…