Related papers: On Soft Limits of Inflationary Correlation Functio…
We develop a formalism for calculating soft limits of $n$-point inflationary correlation functions using separate universe techniques. Our method naturally allows for multiple fields and leads to an elegant diagrammatic approach. As an…
Various inflationary scenarios can often be distinguished from one another by looking at the squeezed limit behavior of correlation functions. Therefore, it is useful to have a framework designed to study this limit in a more systematic and…
We derive novel identities satisfied by inflationary correlation functions in the limit where two external momenta are taken to be small. We derive these statements in two ways: using background-wave arguments and as Ward identities…
We explore some issues in slow roll inflation in situations where field excursions are small compared to $M_p$. We argue that for small field inflation, minimizing fine tuning requires low energy supersymmetry and a tightly constrained…
We study models of inflation where the inflaton corresponds to a flat direction in field space and its mass term is generated by gravity mediated soft supersymmetry breaking at high scale. Assuming the inflaton to have non negligible…
Cosmological soft theorems (or consistency relations) provide a powerful probe for the physics of inflation. These relations rely on minimal assumptions and hold very generally. Consequently, any violation of these relations would rule out…
The decoherence of quantum fluctuations into classical perturbations during inflation is discussed. A simple quantum mechanical argument, using a spatial particle wavefunction rather than a field description, shows that observable…
We study the effective field theory of inflation, i.e. the most general theory describing the fluctuations around a quasi de Sitter background, in the case of single field models. The scalar mode can be eaten by the metric by going to…
Combining the stochastic and $\delta N$ formalisms, we derive non perturbative analytical expressions for all correlation functions of scalar perturbations in single-field, slow-roll inflation. The standard, classical formulas are recovered…
Models of cosmic inflation suggest that our universe underwent an early phase of accelerated expansion, driven by the dynamics of one or more scalar fields. Inflationary models make specific, quantitative predictions for several observable…
We derive soft theorems for on-shell scattering amplitudes from non-linearly realised global space-time symmetries, arising from the flat space and decoupling limits of the effective field theories (EFTs) of inflation, while taking…
We realize and study a model of hybrid inflation in the context of softly broken supersymmetry. The inflaton is taken to be a flat direction in the superfield space and, due to unsuppressed couplings, its soft supersymmetry breaking mass…
Scattering amplitudes at weak coupling are highly constrained by Lorentz invariance, locality and unitarity, and depend on model details only through coupling constants and particle content. In this paper, we develop an understanding of…
We review the connection between inflationary models and observations and concentrate to describe models based on softly broken supersymmetry, in particular running mass models, and their predictions. We then present a fit of the spectral…
We generalize the Effective Field Theory of Inflation to include additional light scalar degrees of freedom that are in their vacuum at the time the modes of interest are crossing the horizon. In order to make the scalars light in a natural…
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…
We derive soft theorems for theories in which time symmetries -- symmetries that involve the transformation of time, an example of which are Lorentz boosts -- are spontaneously broken. The soft theorems involve unequal-time correlation…
We investigate models in which inflation is driven by an ultraviolet safe and interacting scalar sector stemming from a new class of nonsupersymmetric gauge field theories. These new theories, differently from generic scalar models, are…
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…
This is a version of the author's Ph.D. thesis. The methods of effective field theory are used to study generic theories of inflation with a single inflaton field and to perform a general analysis of the associated non-Gaussianities. We…