Related papers: Stochastic Approach to Flat Direction during Infla…
The inflationary and pre-inflationary evolution of scalar modes of cosmological perturbations in a closed universe is analyzed for a loop quantum cosmology model with an inflationary regime consistent with the constraints on inflation…
It is tempting to inflate along one of the many flat directions that arise in supersymmetric theories. The required flatness of the potential to obtain sufficient inflation and to not overproduce density fluctuations occurs naturally.…
We reinterpret Starobinsky's stochastic inflation as an open quantum system, where short-wavelength modes act as the environment for long-wavelength modes. Using the Schwinger-Keldysh formalism, we systematically trace out the environment…
The Minimal Supersymmetry Standard Model contains several hundreds of D- and F-flat directions that are lifted by soft susy breaking terms as well as by non-renormalizable terms. In a recent paper we find that only two of these directions,…
The behaviour of quantum metric perturbations produced during inflation is considered at the stage after the second Hubble radius crossing. It is shown that the classical correlation between amplitude and momentum of a perturbation mode,…
We study the problem of initial conditions for slow-roll inflation along a plateau-like scalar potential within the framework of fluctuation-dissipation dynamics. We consider, in particular, that inflation was preceded by a…
Inflation may have been driven by a component which violated the Null-Energy Condition, thereby leading to {\it super inflation}. We provide the formalism to study cosmological perturbations when such a component is described by a scalar…
We study the quantum backreaction from inflationary fluctuations of a very light, non-minimally coupled spectator scalar and show that it is a viable candiate for dark energy. The problem is solved by suitably adapting the formalism of…
The inflationary dynamics and preheating in a model with a non-minimally coupled inflaton field in the metric and Palatini formalisms are studied in this paper. We find that in both formalisms, irrespective of the initial conditions, our…
It is becoming increasingly clear that large but rare fluctuations of the primordial curvature field, controlled by the tail of its probability distribution, could have dramatic effects on the current structure of the universe -- {\it e.g.}…
A sufficiently rigid relativistic elastic solid can be stable for negative pressure values and thus is capable of driving a stage of accelerated expansion. If a relativistic elastic solid drove an inflationary stage in the early Universe,…
We study how large fluctuations are spatially correlated in the presence of quantum diffusion during inflation. This is done by computing real-space correlation functions in the stochastic-$\delta N$ formalism. We first derive an exact…
Slow-roll inflation is analyzed in the context of modified gravity within the Palatini formalism. As shown in the literature, inflation in this framework requires the presence of non-traceless matter, otherwise it does not occur just as a…
We compute the spectrum of cosmological perturbations in a scenario in which inflation is driven by radiation in a non-commutative space-time. In this scenario, the non-commutativity of space and time leads to a modified dispersion relation…
It is sometimes argued that observation of tensor modes from inflation would provide the first evidence for quantum gravity. However, in the usual inflationary formalism, also the scalar modes involve quantised metric perturbations. We…
Inflationary models with a non-zero background curvature require additional hypothesis or parameters compared to flat inflation and the procedure to construct them cannot be as simple as in the flat case. For this reason, there is no…
The stochastic inflation program is a framework for understanding the dynamics of a quantum scalar field driving an inflationary phase. Though widely used and accepted, there have over recent years been serious criticisms of this theory. In…
Environment interaction may induce stochastic semiclassical dynamics in open quantum systems. In the gravitational context, stress-energy fluctuations of quantum matter fields give rise to a stochastic behaviour in the spacetime geometry.…
We study inflationary models where the kinetic sector of the theory has a non-linearly realised symmetry which is broken by the inflationary potential. We distinguish between kinetic symmetries which non-linearly realise an internal or…
We review some perturbative results obtained in quantum gravity in an accelerating cosmological background. We then describe a class of non-local, purely gravitational models which have the correct structure to reproduce the leading…