Related papers: Accidental Inflation in the Landscape
Massive fields during inflation provide an interesting opportunity to test new physics at very high energy scales. Meanwhile in fundamental realizations, the inflationary field space typically has a curved geometry, which may leave…
This thesis is dedicated to the study of inflationary scenarios based on string theory. Inflation is a brief period of accelerated expansion in the very early Universe which gives natural explanations for problems of the Standard Big Bang…
Non-trivial inflaton self-interactions can yield calculable signatures of primordial non-Gaussianity that are measurable in cosmic surveys. Surprisingly, we find that the phase transition to slow-roll eternal inflation is often incalculable…
Working in the Large Volume Scenario (LVS) of IIB Calabi-Yau flux compactifications, we construct inflationary models from recently computed higher derivative $(\alpha')^3$-corrections. Inflation is driven by a Kaehler modulus whose…
Based on random matrix theory, we compute the likelihood of saddles and minima in a class of random potentials that are softly bounded from above and below, as required for the validity of low energy effective theories. Imposing this bound…
We consider landscape models that admit several regions where the conditions for eternal inflation hold. It is shown that one can use the no-boundary wave function to calculate small departures from homogeneity within our past light cone…
Starting from Einstein-Yang-Mills in higher dimensions with an instanton on a compact sphere, we dimensionally reduce to find an effective four-dimensional action describing "hilltop" inflation. Using recent CMB data, we analyse the…
We consider an inflationary model inspired in the low energy limit of string theory. In this model, the scale factor grows exponentially with time. A perturbation study is performed, and we show that there is a mode which displays an…
We adopt methods from statistical field theory to stochastic inflation. For the example of a free test field in de Sitter and power-law inflation, the power spectrum of long-wavelength fluctuations is computed. We study its dependence on…
We provide type IIB string embeddings of two axion variants of natural inflation. We use a combination of RR 2 form axions as the inflaton field and have its potential generated by non perturbative effects in the superpotential. Besides…
Identifying flux vacua in string theory with stabilized complex structure moduli presents a significant challenge, necessitating the minimization of a scalar potential complicated by infinitely many exponential corrections. In order to…
Modular invariance is a striking symmetry in string theory, which may keep stringy corrections under control. In this paper, we investigate a phenomenological consequence of the modular invariance, assuming that this symmetry is preserved…
As a first step towards inflation in genuinely F-theoretic setups, we propose a scenario where the inflaton is the relative position of two 7-branes on holomorphic 4-cycles. Non-supersymmetric gauge flux induces an attractive inter-brane…
We show that even in the simple framework of pure Kaluza-Klein gravity the shape moduli can generate potentials supporting inflation and/or quintessence. Using the shape moduli as the inflaton or quintessence-field has the additional…
We investigate the dynamics of the recently proposed model of assisted inflation. In this model an arbitrary number of scalar fields with exponential potentials evolve towards an inflationary scaling solution, even if each of the individual…
We describe a scenario for inflation in the framework of non-critical string theory, which does not employ an inflaton field. There is an exponential expansion of the volume of the Universe, induced by enormous entropy production in the…
We discuss relationship between inflation and various models of production of density inhomogeneities due to strings, global monopoles, textures and other topological and non-topological defects. Neither of these models leads to a…
We continue to investigate possible parameter choices for primordial inflation with simple potentials such as power-law and two-term potentials. We examine the amount of parameter tuning to make the slow-roll inflation eternal. In…
We present a simple two-field model of inflation and show how to embed it in string theory as a straightforward generalization of axion monodromy models. Phenomenologically, the predictions are equivalent to those of chaotic inflation, and…
The most important criteria for a successful inflation are to explain the observed temperature anisotropy in the cosmic microwave background radiation, and exiting inflation in a vacuum where it can excite the Standard Model quarks and…