Related papers: Constraints on the primordial gravitational waves …
We study the realization of slow-roll inflation in $\mathcal N = 1$ supergravities where inflation is the result of the evolution of a single chiral field. When there is only one flat direction in field space, it is possible to derive a…
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…
In addition to density perturbations, inflationary models of the early universe generally predict a stochastic background of gravitational waves or tensor fluctuations. By making use of the inflationary flow approach for single field models…
The BICEP2 collaboration reports a detection of primordial cosmic microwave background (CMB) B-mode with a tensor-scalar ratio $r=0.20^{+0.07}_{-0.05}$ (68% C.L.). However, this result is in tension with the recent Planck limit, $r<0.11$…
We discuss a cosmological scenario with a stochastic background of gravitational waves sourced by the tensor perturbation due to a hybrid inflationary model with cubic potential. The tensor-to-scalar ratio for the present hybrid…
We make a joint analysis of BICEP2 and recently released Planck HFI 353 GHz dust polarization data, and find that there is no evidence for the primordial gravitational waves and the bound on the tensor-to-scalar ratio becomes $r<0.083$ at…
The ability to test and constrain theories of cosmic inflation will advance substantially over the next decade. Key data sources include cosmic microwave background (CMB) measurements and observations of the distribution of matter at…
The recent detection of the primordial gravitational waves from the BICEP2 observation seems to be in tension with the upper bound on the amplitude of tensor perturbations from the PLANCK data. We consider a phenomenological model of…
We continue the study of mild transient reductions in the speed of sound of the adiabatic mode during inflation, of their effect on the primordial power spectrum and bispectrum, and of their detectability in the Cosmic Microwave Background…
We extend an alternative, phenomenological approach to inflation by means of an equation of state and a sound speed, both of them functions of the number of $e$-folds and four phenomenological parameters. This approach captures a number of…
At the linear level, the gravitational wave (GW) spectrum predicted by inflation, and many of its alternatives, can have arbitrarily small amplitude and consequently an unconstrained tilt. However, at second order, tensor fluctuations are…
The scalar spectral index $n_s$ is a powerful test of inflationary models. The tightest constraint on $n_s$ to date derives from the combination of cosmic microwave background (CMB) data with baryon acoustic oscillation (BAO) data. The…
Primordial Gravitational Waves, i.e. a background of metric perturbations sourced by the quantum inflationary fluctuations, if measured, could both provide a substantial evidence for primordial inflation and shed light on physics at…
By adopting the intermediate and power-law scale factors, we study the tachyon inflation with constant sound speed. We perform some numerical analysis on the perturbation and non-gaussianity parameters in this model and compare the results…
We analyse the implications of the Planck data for cosmic inflation. The Planck nominal mission temperature anisotropy measurements, combined with the WMAP large-angle polarization, constrain the scalar spectral index to $n_s = 0.9603 \pm…
We place functional constraints on the shape of the inflaton potential from the cosmic microwave background through a variant of the generalized slow roll approximation that allows large amplitude, rapidly changing deviations from…
Different inflationary models predict oscillatory features in the primordial power spectrum. These can leave an imprint on both the cosmic microwave background (CMB) and the large-scale structure (LSS) of our Universe, that can be searched…
In the measurements of cosmic microwave background polarizations, three frequency channels are necessary for discriminating the primordial B-modes from the polarized dust and the synchrotron emission. We carry out an optimistic estimate on…
It is commonly assumed that the stochastic background of gravitational waves on cosmological scales follows an almost scale-independent power spectrum, as generically predicted by the inflationary paradigm. However, it is not inconceivable…
The implications of the WMAP (Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe) third year data for inflation are investigated using both the slow-roll approximation and an exact numerical integration of the inflationary power spectra including a…