Related papers: Constraints on the primordial gravitational waves …
Cosmological $\alpha$-attractors are a compelling class of inflationary models. They lead to universal predictions for large-scale observables, broadly independent from the functional form of the inflaton potential. In this work we derive…
The implications of a smaller than unity speed of sound of the scalar perturbations during cosmic inflation is studied in terms of a model independent large-$N$ approach. We show that the $(n_s, r)$ plane is non-trivially degenerated when…
Models of inflation where the entropic directions have large and negative masses $|m_s| \gg H$ can be well described by a single-field EFT with an imaginary sound speed $c_s$. Among other features, they predict an exponential enhancement of…
The increasingly stringent observational bounds on primordial gravitational waves strongly constrain inflationary model building, favoring scenarios that predict highly suppressed tensor perturbations. While many viable constructions rely…
In this paper, we consider two case examples of Dirac-Born-Infeld (DBI) generalizations of canonical large-field inflation models, characterized by a reduced sound speed, $c_{S} < 1$. The reduced speed of sound lowers the tensor-scalar…
The inflationary cosmology paradigm is very successful in explaining the CMB anisotropy to the percent level. Besides the dependence on the inflationary model, the power spectra, spectral tilt and non-Gaussianity of the CMB temperature…
Bursts of particle production during inflation provide a well-motivated mechanism for creating bump like features in the primordial power spectrum. Current data constrains these features to be less than about 5% the size of the featureless…
While large scale cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropies involve a combination of the scalar and tensor fluctuations, the scalar amplitude can be independently determined through the CMB-galaxy cross-correlation. Using recently…
Inflationary models within string theory exhibit unusual scalar field dynamics involving non-minimal kinetic terms and generically referred to as k-inflation. In this situation, the standard slow-roll approach used to determine the behavior…
As is well known, the non-Gaussianity parameter $f_{_{\rm NL}}$, which is often used to characterize the amplitude of the scalar bi-spectrum, can be expressed completely in terms of the scalar spectral index $n_{\rm s}$ in the squeezed…
The effect of the initial condition of inflation on the power spectra of scalar and tensor perturbations is estimated assuming a slow-roll inflation model. By defining a more general initial state in inflation particular properties of the…
We perform a precision investigation of smooth quintessential inflation in which a single canonical scalar field unifies the two known phases of cosmic acceleration. Using a CMB-normalized runaway exponential potential, we obtain sharply…
We investigate the observational signatures of three models of the early Universe in the $B$-mode polarization of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation. In addition to the standard single field inflationary model, we also consider…
We describe models of single-field inflation with small and sharp step features in the potential (and sound speed) of the inflaton field, in the context of the Effective Field Theory of Inflation. This approach allows us to study the…
In this article, we do a thorough investigation of the competency of the forthcoming Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) and Galaxy surveys in probing the features in the primordial power spectrum. Primordial features are specific…
We emphasize that the estimation of cosmological parameters from cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropy data, such as the recent high resolution maps from BOOMERanG and MAXIMA-1, requires assumptions about the primordial spectra. The…
We present the first direct constraints on a Degenerate Higher Order Scalar Tensor (DHOST) inflation model using the Planck 2018 Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) results on non-Gaussianities. We identify that the bispectrum consists of a…
The BB-mode angular correlation power spectrum of CMB is obtained by considering the primordial gravitational waves in the squeezed vacuum state for various inflationary models and results are compared with the joint analysis of the…
We investigate the possibility that the amplitude of scalar density perturbations may be damped after inflation. This would imply that CMB anisotropies do not uniquely fix the amplitude of the perturbations generated during inflation and…
Current measurements of the temperature and polarization anisotropy power spectra of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) seem to indicate that the naive expectation for the slow-roll hierarchy within the most simple inflationary paradigm…