Related papers: Rolling in the Modulated Reheating Scenario
Taking field theory seriously, inflation model-building is difficult but not impossible. The observed value of the spectral index of the adiabatic density perturbation is starting to discriminate between models, and may well pick out a…
We derive the first systematic observational constraints on reheating in models of inflation where an additional light scalar field contributes to primordial density perturbations and affects the expansion history during reheating. This…
The generic prediction for the perturbations generated during slow--roll, single--field inflation, as they appear in the cosmic microwave background (CMB), is a flat, close--to--Gaussian spectrum. We calculate the general solution for a…
We derive general analytic formulae for the power spectrum and spectral index of the curvature perturbation produced during inflation driven by a multi-component inflaton field, up to the second order in the slow-roll approximation. We do…
In cosmological scenarios with thermal inflation, extra eras of moduli matter domination, thermal inflation and flaton matter domination exist between primordial inflation and the radiation domination of Big Bang nucleosynthesis. During…
We examine a wide class of multi-field inflationary models based on fields that decay or stabilize during inflation in a staggered fashion. The fields driving assisted inflation are on flat, short stretches, before they encounter a sharp…
We revisit spectator field models including curvaton and modulated reheating scenarios, specifically focusing on their viability in the new Planck era, based on the derived expression for the spectral index in general spectator field…
Conditions are obtained for the existence of a warm inflationary attractor in the system of equations describing an inflaton coupled to radiation. These conditions restrict the temperature dependence of the dissipative terms and the size of…
We study the details of preheating in an inflationary scenario in which the Standard Model Higgs, strongly non-minimally coupled to gravity, plays the role of the inflaton. We find that the Universe does not reheat immediately through…
We study the effect of inflation on gaugino condensation in supergravity. Unless the Hubble scale H is significantly below the gaugino condensation scale, the gaugino condensate is a dynamical variable which cannot be integrated out. For a…
We discuss the spectrum of scalar density perturbations from warm inflation when the friction coefficient $\Gamma$ in the inflaton equation is dependent on the inflaton field. The spectral index of scalar fluctuations depends on a new…
The sensitivity of inflationary spectra to initial conditions is addressed in the context of a phenomenological model that breaks Lorentz invariance by dissipative effects above some threshold energy $\Lambda$. These effects are obtained…
While ubiquitous in supersymmetric and string theory models, inflationary scenarios near an inflection point in the scalar potential generically require a severe fine-tuning of a priori unrelated supersymmetry breaking effects. We show that…
It is conjectured that inflation, taking account of quantum gravity, leads to a discrete spectrum of cosmological perturbations, instead of the continuous Gaussian spectrum predicted by standard field theory in an unquantized background.…
Curvature perturbations with short wavelengths exit the Hubble horizon when the universe may contain a thermal plasma in addition to an inflaton field that drives its expansion. We solve the corresponding fluctuation-dissipation dynamics at…
In this work we investigate curvature perturbations and non-Gaussianity arising from Higgs modulated reheating in the early Universe. We employ three different methods -- the period-averaging (PA) method, the exact method, and the…
We show explicitly some exciting features of double-inflation: (i) it can often lead to strongly correlated adiabatic and entropy (isocurvature) power spectra. (ii) The two-field slow-roll consistency relations can be violated when the…
A new mechanism is presented which can reheat the Universe in non-oscillatory models of inflation, where the inflation period is followed by a period dominated by the kinetic density for the inflaton field (kination). The mechanism…
A scalar Higgs field can be repeatedly switched on and off when it couples to a classically oscillating scalar modulus field. The modulus flips the Higgs mass term between stable and tachyonic values. We study a cosmological scenario in…
It is shown that double inflation (two minimally coupled massive scalar fields) can produce correlated adiabatic and isocurvature primordial perturbations. Depending on the two relevant parameters of the model, the contributions to the…