Related papers: Inflating with the Composite Inflaton
We study a toy model for an interacting scalar field theory in which the fundamental excitations are confined in the sense of having unphysical, positivity-violating propagators, a fact tracing back to a decomposition of these in…
In quasi single field inflation there are massive fields that interact with the inflaton field. If these other fields are not much heavier than the Hubble constant during inflation ($H$) these interactions can lead to important consequences…
The curvaton and the inhomogeneous reheating scenarios for the generation of the cosmological curvature perturbation on large scales represent an alternative to the standard slow-roll scenario where the observed density perturbations are…
Models of inflation in which the Higgs field is non-minimally coupled to gravity lead, after a recaling of the metric, to a complicated expression for the potential of the inflaton field. Nevertheless, this potential produces the desired…
Cosmological inflation is studied in the case where the inflaton is the overall modulus $T$ for an orbifold. General forms of the (non-perturbative) superpotential are considered to ensure that $G=K+{\rm ln}|W|^2$ is modular invariant. We…
We study the dynamics of the standard model Higgs field in the inflationary cosmology. Since metastability of our vacuum is indicated by the current experimental data of the Higgs boson and top quark, inflation models with a large Hubble…
We argue, using a phenomenological holographic approach, that walking, strongly coupled gauge theories generate a suitable potential for a small field inflation model. We show that the effective description is a model of a single inflaton.…
We investigate an inflationary scenario driven by a complex scalar field nonminimally coupled to gravity and subject to a non-symmetric complex potential. The real part of the potential controls the cosmological background and realizes a…
We study the perspectives to extract information about the microphysical parameters that governed the reheating process after cosmic inflation from CMB data. We identify conditions under which the inflaton coupling to other fields can be…
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.…
Although natural inflation is a theoretically well-motivated model for cosmic inflation, it is in tension with recent Planck cosmic microwave background anisotropy measurements. We present a way to alleviate this tension by considering a…
We study a recently proposed running kinetic inflation model in which the inflaton potential becomes flat due to rapid growth of the kinetic term at large inflaton field values. As concrete examples, we build a variety of chaotic inflation…
Transforming canonical scalars to the Einstein frame can give a multi-field generalization of pole inflation (namely, a scalar with a divergent kinetic term) at vanishing field-dependent Planck mass. However, to obtain an attractor, the…
We study multi-field inflation models that contain a non-trivial field-space metric and a non-minimal coupling between the gravity and inflaton sectors. In such models it is known that even in the absence of explicit interaction terms the…
We reexamine inflation due to a constrained inflaton in the model of a complex scalar. Inflaton evolves along a spiral-like valley of special scalar potential in the scalar field space just like single field inflation. Sub-Planckian…
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…
Slow-roll inflation can be studied as an effective field theory. The form of the inflaton potential consistent with the data is V(phi) = N M^4 w(phi/[sqrt{N} M_{Pl}]) where phi is the inflaton field, M is the inflation energy scale, and N ~…
Inflation is studied in the context of induced gravity (IG) $\gamma \sigma^2 R$, where $R$ is the Ricci scalar, $\sigma$ a scalar field and $\gamma$ a dimensionless constant. We study in detail cosmological perturbations in IG and examine…
One of the fundamental objectives of contemporary cosmology is to understand the physics of the inflationary universe, owing to its observably verifiable predictions about the very early universe with an energy scale of $\sim 10^{16}$ GeV.…
Extensions of the Standard Model and general relativity featuring a UV fixed point can leave observable implications at accessible energies. Although mass parameters such as the Planck scale can appear through dimensional transmutation, all…