Related papers: Reheating dynamics affects non-perturbative decay …
If the conformal invariance of electromagnetism is broken during inflation, then primordial magnetic fields may be produced. If this symmetry breaking is generated by the coupling between electromagnetism and a scalar field---e.g. the…
We study the inflationary evolution of a scalar field $h$ with an unstable potential for the case where the Hubble parameter $H$ during inflation is larger than the instability scale $\Lambda_I$ of the potential. Quantum fluctuations in the…
The theory of reheating of the Universe after inflation is developed. The transition from inflation to the hot Universe turns out to be strongly model-dependent and typically consists of several stages. Immediately after inflation the field…
Reheating after inflation can occur through inflaton decay or efficient parametric resonant production of particles from the oscillation of the inflaton. If the particles produced interact with scalars that were light during inflation, then…
During inflation in the early universe, the Higgs field continuously acquires long-wave quantum fluctuations. They accumulate to yield a non-vanishing value with an exponentially large correlation length. We study consequences of such Higgs…
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 new model of thermal inflation is introduced, in which the mass of the thermal waterfall field is dependent on a light spectator scalar field. Using the $\delta N$ formalism, the "end of inflation" scenario is investigated in order to…
We study the post-inflationary dynamics of the Standard Model Higgs and a real singlet scalar $s$, coupled together through a renormalizable coupling $\lambda_{sh}h^2s^2$, in a $Z_2$ symmetric model that may explain the observed dark matter…
The standard model Higgs boson can serve as the inflaton field of slow roll inflationary models provided it exhibits a large non-minimal coupling with the gravitational scalar curvature. The Higgs boson self interactions and its couplings…
In this paper, we discuss the constraints on the reheating temperature supposing an early post-reheating cosmological phase dominated by one or more simple scalar fields produced from inflaton decay and decoupled from matter and radiation.…
We study the early stages of an oscillatory reheating phase in an inflaton plus spectator axion-SU(2) system, including both an axion-gauge Chern-Simons coupling $\chi F\tilde{F}$ and a gravitational Chern-Simons coupling $\chi R\tilde{R}$.…
We investigate the viability of inflation with a spectator sector comprised of non-Abelian gauge fields coupled through a higher order operator. We dub this model "spectator Gauge-flation". We study the predictions for the amplitude and…
The basic properties of oscillons -- localized, long-lived, time-dependent scalar field configurations -- are briefly reviewed, including recent results demonstrating how their existence depends on the dimensionality of spacetime. Their…
Inflation is nowadays a well-established paradigm consistent with all the observations. The precise nature of the inflaton is however unknown and its role could be played by any candidate able to imitate a scalar condensate in the slow-roll…
We present a mechanism for gravitational wave (GW) production from isocurvature perturbations in spectator scalar fields during inflation. These energetically subdominant fields develop blue-tilted power spectra through inflationary…
Using 3+1 classical lattice simulations, we follow the symmetry breaking pattern and subsequent non-linear evolution of a spectator field non-minimally coupled to gravity when the post-inflationary dynamics is given in terms of a stiff…
We investigate the development of spectator (light test) field condensates due to their quantum fluctuations in a de Sitter inflationary background, making use of the stochastic formalism to describe the system. In this context, a…
We study the spectrum of cosmological fluctuations in scenarios such as Galilean Genesis in which a spectator scalar field acquires a scale-invariant spectrum of perturbations during an early phase which asymptotes in the far past to…
We investigate the post-inflationary evolution of a non-minimally coupled inflaton field in scalar-tensor theories, framed within the flexible framework of Einstein-Cartan gravity. By focusing on a class of simplified Higgs-like scenarios,…
The spectrum of adiabatic density perturbation generated during inflation is studied in the case the time derivative of an inflation-driving scalar field (inflaton) vanishes at some time during inflation. It is shown that the nondecaying…