Related papers: Scale-invariance as the origin of dark radiation?
The concept of early Universe inflation resolves several problems of hot Big Bang theory and quantitatively explains the origin of the inhomogeneities in the present Universe. However, it is not possible to arrange inflation in a scalar…
We demonstrate that the combination of the ideas of unimodular gravity, scale invariance, and the existence of an exactly massless dilaton leads to the evolution of the universe supported by present observations: inflation in the past,…
Classical scale invariance represents a promising framework for model building beyond the Standard Model. However, once coupled to gravity, any scale-invariant microscopic model requires an explanation for the origin of the Planck mass. In…
Dynamical chiral symmetry breaking in a QCD-like hidden sector is used to generate the Planck mass and the electroweak scale including the heavy right-handed neutrino mass. A real scalar field transmits the energy scale of the hidden sector…
Dilatons are pseudo-Nambu-Goldstone bosons arising from the breaking of conformal invariance. In this letter we point out that in general a dilaton mass has a power-law dependence on a small parameter related to the explicit breaking of…
Inflationary observables of a classically scale invariant model, in which the origin of the Planck mass and the electroweak scale including the right-handed neutrino mass is chiral symmetry breaking in a QCD-like hidden sector, are studied.…
In R^2-inflation scalaron slow roll is responsible for the inflationary stage, while its oscillations reheat the Universe. We find that the same scalaron decays induced by gravity can also provide the dark matter production and…
We propose a model based on radiative symmetry breaking that combines inflation with Dark Energy and is consistent with the WMAP 7-year regions. The radiative inflationary potential leads to the prediction of a spectral index 0.955 \lesssim…
We formulate new conformal models of inflation and dark energy which generalise the Higgs-Dilaton scenario. We embed these models in unimodular gravity whose effect is to break scale invariance in the late time Universe. In the early…
We consider inflation within a model framework where the Higgs boson arises as a pseudo-Goldstone boson associated with the breaking of a global symmetry at a scale significantly larger than the electroweak one. We show that in such a model…
We show that the modulated reheating mechanism can naturally account for dark radiation, whose existence is hinted by recent observations of the cosmic microwave background radiation and the primordial Helium abundance. In this mechanism,…
The discovery of the primordial B-mode polarisation by the BICEP2 experiment indicates inflation with a relatively high energy scale. Taking this indication into account, we propose consistent scenarios to account for the observed baryon…
It is shown that dark energy can be obtained from the interplay of the Higgs boson and the inflaton. A key element is the realization that electroweak symmetry breaking can trigger a second phase of rolling of the inflaton, which, when…
In natural inflation models, the inflaton is a pseudo Nambu-Goldstone boson and the flatness of the potential is protected by shift symmetries. In this framework, a successful inflation requires the global symmetry to be spontaneously…
We propose that inflation and dark matter have a common origin, connected to the neutrino mass generation scheme. As a model we consider spontaneous breaking of global lepton number within the seesaw mechanism. We show that it provides an…
In scale-invariant models of fundamental physics, mass scales are generated by spontaneous symmetry breaking. In this work, we study inflation in scale-invariant $R^2$ gravity, in which the Planck mass is generated by a scalar field, which…
We consider a minimal scale-invariant extension of the Standard Model of particle physics combined with Unimodular Gravity formulated in \cite{Shaposhnikov:2008xb}. This theory is able to describe not only an inflationary stage, related to…
Quantum gravity computations suggest the existence of an ultraviolet and an infrared fixed point where quantum scale invariance emerges as an exact symmetry. We discuss a particular variable gravity model for the crossover between these…
We investigate a simple model to explain inflation, neutrino masses and dark matter simultaneously. This is based on the so-called radiative seesaw model proposed by Ma in order to explain neutrino masses and dark matter by introducing a…
Scale invariance may be a classical symmetry which is broken radiatively. This provides a simple way to stabilise the scale of electroweak symmetry breaking against radiative corrections. But for such a theory to be fully realistic, it must…