Related papers: Universality in Multifield Inflation from String T…
In spite of the phenomenological successes of the inflationary universe scenario, the current realizations of inflation making use of scalar fields lead to serious conceptual problems which are reviewed in this lecture. String theory may…
We study the linear perturbation of the recently proposed model of inflation where a uniform gauge-kinetic coupling of the inflaton to multiple vector fields breaks the cosmic no-hair conjecture while maintaining the isotropy. We derive the…
Inflation offers a simple model for very early evolution of our Universe and the origin of primordial perturbations on large scales. Over the last 25 years we have become familiar with the predictions of single-field models, but inflation…
We consider models of inflection point inflation. The main drawback of such models is that they suffer from the overshoot problem. Namely the initial condition should be fine tuned to be near the inflection point for the universe to…
We study the emergence of quantum entanglement in multi-field inflation. In this scenario, the perturbations of one field contribute to the observable curvature perturbation, while multi-field dynamics with the other fields affect the…
We propose an inflationary scenario, M-flation, in which inflation is driven by three $N\times N$ hermitian matrices $\Phi_i, i=1,2,3$. The inflation potential of our model, which is strongly motivated from string theory, is constructed…
In brane inflationary scenarios, the cosmological perturbations are supposed to originate from the vacuum fluctuations of the inflaton field corresponding to the position of the brane. We show that a significant, and possibly dominant,…
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…
Multi-field inflation can be inherently non-predictive, with the exception of models with strong attractors. In this work, we focus on models with multiple scalar fields that are non-minimally coupled to the space-time Ricci curvature…
Quantization implies independent degrees of freedom that do not appear in the classical theory, given by fluctuations, correlations, and higher moments of a state. A systematic derivation of the resulting dynamical systems is presented here…
In inflationary scenarios with more than one scalar field, inflation may proceed even if each of the individual fields has a potential too steep for that field to sustain inflation on its own. We show that scalar fields with exponential…
Although the paradigm of inflation has been extensively studied to demonstrate how macroscopic inhomogeneities in our universe originate from quantum fluctuations, most of the established literature ignores the crucial role that…
The observational constraints on the primordial power spectrum have tightened considerably with the release of the first year analysis of the WMAP observations, especially when combined with the results from other CMB experiments and galaxy…
Recently we introduced an inflationary setup in which the inflaton fields are matrix valued scalar fields with a generic quartic potential, M-flation. In this work we study the landscape of various inflationary models arising from…
String theory enjoys an elevated role among quantum gravity theories, since it seems to be the most consistent UV completion of general relativity and the Standard Model. However, it is hard to verify the existence of this underlying theory…
Based on the flux-scaling scenario we study a model consisting on Type IIB string theory compactified on a Calabi-Yau manifold with a frozen complex structure in the presence of generic fluxes. The model contains (meta)stable Minkowski and…
We review cosmological inflation and its realization in quantum field theory and in string theory. This material is a portion of a book, also entitled "Inflation and String Theory", to be published by Cambridge University Press.
Forthcoming missions probing the absolute intensity of the CMB are expected to be able to measure spectral distortions, which are deviations from its blackbody distribution. As cosmic inflation can induce spectral distortions, these…
We study the possibility of extended inflation in the effective theory of gravity from strings compactified to four dimensions and find that it strongly depends on the mechanism of supersymmetry breaking. We consider a general class of…
This is a short review of string cosmology. We wish to connect string-scale physics as closely as possible to observables accessible to current or near-future experiments. Our possible best hope to do so is a description of inflation in…