Related papers: Gauge Fields and Inflation
We study both the background evolution and cosmological perturbations of anisotropic inflationary models supported by coupled scalar and vector fields. The models we study preserve the U(1) gauge symmetry associated with the vector field,…
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…
We develop a general formalism for analyzing linear perturbations in multiple-field cosmological inflation based on the gauge-ready approach. Our inflationary model consists of an arbitrary number of scalar fields with non-minimal kinetic…
In this article we review the theory of cosmological inflation with a particular focus on the beautiful connection it provides between the physics of the very small and observations of the very large. We explain how quantum mechanical…
A cosmological gauge field with isotropic stress-energy introduces parity violation into the behavior of gravitational waves. We show that a primordial spectrum of inflationary gravitational waves develops a preferred handedness, left- or…
We derive the quantum energy-momentum tensor and the corresponding quantum equation of state for gauge field theory using the effective Lagrangian approach. The energy-momentum tensor has a term proportional to the space-time metric and…
Inflation provides a unified paradigm for understanding the isotropy of the cosmic microwave background (CMB), the flatness problem, and the origin of large-scale structure. Although the physics responsible for inflation is not yet well…
The large-scale magnetic fields arising from the quantum mechanical fluctuations of the hypercharge are investigated when the evolution of the gauge coupling is combined with a sufficiently long inflationary stage. In this framework the…
Models of axion inflation are particularly interesting since they provide a natural justification for the flatness of the potential over a super-Planckian distance, namely the approximate shift-symmetry of the inflaton. In addition, most of…
The Higgs field is an attractive candidate for the inflaton because it is an observationally confirmed fundamental scalar field. Importantly, it can be modeled by the most general renormalizable scalar potential. However, if the classical…
The origin of the $\mu$G magnetic fields observed in galaxies is unknown. One promising scenario is that magnetic fields generated during inflation, larger than 0.1 nG on Mpc scales, were adiabatically compressed to $\mu$G strengths in…
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…
Models of inflation based on axions, which owe their popularity to the robustness against UV corrections, have also a very distinct class of signatures. The relevant interactions of the axion are a non-perturbative oscillating contribution…
Multifield models of inflation with nonminimal couplings are in excellent agreement with the recent results from {\it Planck}. Across a broad range of couplings and initial conditions, such models evolve along an effectively single-field…
We investigate a framework aiming to provide a common origin for the large-angle anomalies detected in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), which are hypothesized as the result of the statistical inhomogeneity developed by different…
In this paper, we investigate the back-reaction of $U(1)$ gauge fields into a class of inflationary settings. To be more precise, we employ a Bianchi-I geometry (taken as an anisotropic perturbation of a flat FRW model) within two types of…
A first-order phase transition in the early universe can give an observable stochastic gravitational background (SGWB), which will necessarily have primordial anisotropies across the sky. In multi-field inflationary scenarios, these…
We investigate the degree to which the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) can be used to constrain primordial non-Gaussianity coming from the presence of spinning particles coupled to the inflaton. We compute the $\langle TTT \rangle$ and…
Cosmological equations for homogeneous isotropic models filled by scalar fields and ultrarelativistic matter are investigated in the framework of gauge theories of gravity. Regular inflationary cosmological models of flat, closed and open…
The temperature fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background observed by COBE provide strong support for an inflationary phase in the early universe, below the GUT scale. We argue that a singlet field in a hidden sector of an effective…