Related papers: Scalar Trapping and Saxion Cosmology
We revisit the cosmological aspects of axion models. In the high-scale inflation scenario, the Peccei-Quinn (PQ) symmetry is likely to be restored during/after inflation. If the curvature of the PQ scalar potential at the origin is smaller…
In the early universe, the potential of a scalar field can be significantly modified, and the scalar field may be trapped for a long time in a different location than the current vacuum. The trapping effect can increase or decrease the…
The axion is a well-motivated candidate for the inflaton, as the radiative corrections that spoil many single-field models are avoided by virtue of its shift symmetry. However, axions generically couple to gauge sectors. As the axion…
Topological defects can have significant cosmological consequences, so their production must be examined carefully. It is usually assumed that topological defects are produced if the temperature becomes sufficiently high, but in reality…
With the help of the tachyonic trapping mechanism one can potentially solve a number of problems affecting quintessential inflation models. In this mechanism we introduce a trapping field with a spontaneous symmetry breaking potential. When…
There often appear coherently oscillating scalar fields in particle physics motivated cosmological scenarios, which may have rich phenomenological consequences. Scalar fields should somehow interact with background thermal bath in order to…
We show that, for values of the axion decay constant parametrically close to the GUT scale, the Peccei-Quinn phase transition may naturally occur during warm inflation. This results from interactions between the Peccei-Quinn scalar field…
A numerical study of a pseudoscalar inflation having an axion-photon-like coupling is performed by solving numerically the coupled differential equations of motion for inflaton and photon mode functions from the onset of inflation to the…
We study the effects of particle production on the evolution of the inflaton field in an axion monodromy model with the goal of discovering in which situations the resulting dynamics will be consistent with the {\it swampland constraints}.…
The cosmological evolution of a scalar field is shaped by Hubble damping. Any non-gravitational couplings of the scalar with the primordial thermal bath generically contribute additional damping. Although rarely considered, such thermal…
We consider supersymmetric model with Peccei-Quinn symmetry and study effects of saxion on the evolution of the universe, paying particular attention to the effects of thermal bath. The axion multiplet inevitably couples to colored…
The motion of a scalar field that interacts with a hot plasma, like the inflaton during reheating, is damped, which is a dissipative process. At high temperatures the damping can be described by a local term in the effective equation of…
I review the theory of preheating after inflation, focusing on the recently found tachyonic preheating in the theories with spontaneous symmetry breaking. This occurs due to the tachyonic instability of the scalar field near the top of its…
We reconsider the old problem of the dynamics of spontaneous symmetry breaking using 3d lattice simulations, and develop a theory of tachyonic preheating, which occurs due to the spinodal instability of the scalar field. Tachyonic…
We show that the hybrid inflation is naturally realized in the framework of a supersymmetric axion model, which is consistent with the WMAP observation if the Peccei-Quinn symmetry breaking scale is around 10^{15}GeV. By solving the post…
The scenario of the slow-roll inflation is studied in the frame of the scalar-tensor theory of gravity where the scalar field has a non-minimal coupling to the geometric part. After deriving the main dynamical and perturbation equations,…
We analyze the dynamics of inflationary models with a coupling of the inflaton $\phi$ to gauge fields of the form $\phi F \tilde{F}/f$, as in the case of axions. It is known that this leads to an instability, with exponential amplification…
Relaxation process of a coherent scalar field oscillation in the thermal bath is investigated using nonequilibrium quantum field theory. The Langevin-type equation of motion is obtained which has a memory term and both additive and…
Studies of non-equilibrium dynamics of cosmological phase transitions may involve a scalar field interacting weakly with the energy-momentum tensor of a thermal plasma. At late times, when the scalar field is approaching equilibrium, it…
Scalar fields in the early Universe are mostly discussed in two limits: either in equilibrium or completely decoupled. In this work we discuss scenarios where there are scalar fields that are not in equilibrium, but for which the coupling…