Related papers: Loop corrections and a new test of inflation
The cosmological observations of cosmic microwave background and large-scale structure indicate that our universe has a nearly scaling invariant power spectrum of the primordial perturbation. However, the exact origin for this primordial…
Recent measurements by the {\it Planck} experiment of the power spectrum of temperature anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB) reveal a deficit of power in low multipoles compared to the predictions from best-fit…
We show that inflationary models with broken rotational invariance generate testable off-diagonal signatures in the correlation between the $\mu$-type distortion and temperature fluctuations of the cosmic microwave background. More…
We include the single graviton loop contribution to the linearized Einstein equation. Explicit results are obtained for one loop corrections to the propagation of gravitational radiation. Although suppressed by a minuscule loop-counting…
We show that there are inflationary models for which perturbations in the energy momentum tensor, which are of second order in the scalar field, cannot be neglected. We first specify the conditions under which the usual first order…
Fundamental formulae representing the density perturbation spectrums generated in inflationary scenarios are rigorously proved. Quantum fluctuations as initial conditions for structure generation in some inflationary era can be calculated…
We first derive the primordial power spectra, spectral indices and runnings of both scalar and tensor perturbations of a flat inflationary universe to the second-order approximations of the slow-roll parameters, in the framework of loop…
The gravitational waves measured at LIGO are presumed here to come from merging primordial black holes. We ask how these primordial black holes could arise through inflationary models while not conflicting with current experiments. Among…
Fluctuations in the intensity and polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) and the large-scale distribution of matter in the universe each contain clues about the nature of the earliest moments of time. The next generation of…
We propose a new mechanism to generate primordial curvature perturbations, based on the resonant production of particles during inflation. It is known that this phenomenon can trap the inflaton for a fraction of e-fold. This effect is…
During single clock inflation, hidden fields (i.e. fields coupled to the inflaton only gravitationally) in their adiabatic vacua can ordinarily only affect observables through virtual effects. After renormalizing background quantities…
We analytically compute the power spectrum of primordial curvature perturbations in Type III hilltop inflation models under the slow-roll approximation. The model parameters are constrained using current Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB)…
We show that density perturbations seeded by the inflaton can be suppressed when having additional light degrees of freedom contributing to the production of perturbations. The inflaton fluctuations affect the light field dynamics by…
We present a new class of two-field inflationary attractor models, known as `shift-symmetric orbital inflation', whose behaviour is strongly multi-field but whose predictions are remarkably close to those of single-field inflation. In these…
The primordial four-point function encodes a wealth of information about the inflationary Universe. Despite extensive theoretical work, most models of four-point physics have never been compared to data. In this series, we conduct a…
The recent BICEP2 measurement of B-modes in the polarization of the cosmic microwave background suggests that inflation was driven by a field at an energy scale of $2\times 10^{16}$ GeV. I explore the potential of upcoming CMB polarization…
The leading quantum correction to the power spectrum of a gravitationally-coupled light scalar field is calculated, assuming that it is generated during a phase of single-field, slow-roll inflation.
The possibility that quantum geometry effects may alleviate the apparent tensions existing at large angular scales in the observations of the Cosmic Microwave Background explains the increasing interest in considering primordial…
The purpose of these lectures is to give a pedagogical introduction to inflation and the production of primordial perturbations, as well as a review of some of the latest developments in this domain. After a short introduction, we review…
After a brief summary of general relativity and cosmology, we present the basic concepts underlying inflation, the currently best motivated models for the early Universe. We describe the simplest inflation models, based on a single scalar…