Related papers: Rolling Through a Vacuum
Brief periods of non-slow-roll evolution during inflation can produce interesting observable consequences, as primordial black holes, or an inflationary gravitational wave spectrum enhanced at small scales. We develop a model independent,…
In a situation like eternal inflation, where our data is replicated at infinitely-many other space-time events, it is necessary to make a prior assumption about our location to extract predictions. The principle of mediocrity entails that…
We present a series of theoretical constraints on the potentially viable inflation models that might yield a blue spectrum for primordial tensor perturbations. By performing a detailed dynamical analysis we show that, while there exists…
We explore the inflationary phase of a scalar field with a kinetic term non-minimally coupled to gravity. We find that one of the slow-roll conditions is naturally consequence of the equation of motion of the scalar field. Thus, slow-roll…
In double-field inflation, which exploits two scalar fields, one of the fields rolls slowly during inflation whereas the other field is trapped in a meta-stable vacuum. The nucleation rate from the false vacuum to the true one becomes…
Inflation of a universe filled by an elastic continuous medium is considered. Elastic inflation, while capable of describing current observations, is qualitatively different from standard inflationary models. The scalar and tensor modes…
In this work we study slow-roll inflation for a vector-tensor model with massive vector fields non-minimally coupled to gravity. The model under consideration has arbitrary parameters for each geometrical coupling. Taking into account a…
Quantum fast-roll initial conditions for the inflaton which are different from the classical fast-roll conditions and from the quantum slow-roll conditions can lead to inflation that last long enough. These quantum fast-roll initial…
We study models of inflation where the inflaton corresponds to a flat direction in field space and its mass term is generated by gravity mediated soft supersymmetry breaking at high scale. Assuming the inflaton to have non negligible…
In the ``natural inflation'' model, the inflaton potential is periodic. We show that Planck scale physics may induce corrections to the inflaton potential, which is also periodic with a greater frequency. Such high frequency corrections…
We explore the bound of the trans-Planckian censorship conjecture on an inflation model with multiple stages. We show that if the first inflationary stage is responsible for the primordial perturbations in the cosmic microwave background…
The implementation of a Planck-scale high frequency and short wavelength cutoff in quantum theories on expanding backgrounds may have potentially nontrivial implications, such as the breaking of local Lorentz invariance and the existence of…
We show that models of `just enough' inflation, where the slow-roll evolution lasted only $50-60$ e-foldings, feature modifications of the CMB power spectrum at large angular scales. We perform a systematic and model-independent analysis of…
The first year of observations by the Planck satellite mission shows that the cosmic microwave background (CMB) fluctuations are consistent with gaussian statistics in the primordial perturbations, a key prediction of the simplest models of…
We make a case for setting initial conditions for inflation at the Planck epoch in the kinetically dominated regime. For inflationary potentials with a plateau or a hill, i.e. potentials that are bounded from above within a certain region…
We argue that primordial gravitational waves have a spectral break and its information is quite useful for exploring the early universe. Indeed, such a spectral break can be a fingerprint of the end of inflation, and the amplitude and the…
In most current models of inflation based on a weakly self-coupled scalar matter field minimally coupled to gravity, the period of inflation lasts so long that, at the beginning of the inflationary period, the physical wavelengths of…
Rubano and Barrow have discussed the emergence of a dark energy, with late-time cosmic acceleration arising from a self-interacting homogeneous scalar field with a potential of hyperbolic power type. Here, we study the evolution of this…
In this work we shall study $k$-inflation theories with non-minimal coupling of the scalar field to gravity, in the presence of only a higher order kinetic term of the form $\sim \mathrm{const}\times X^{\mu}$, with…
We derive the semiclassical evolution of massless minimally coupled scalar matter in the de Sitter space-time from the Born-Oppenheimer reduction of the Wheeler-DeWitt equation. We show that the dynamics of trans-Planckian modes can be cast…