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Cosmological $\alpha$-attractors stand out as particularly compelling models to describe inflation in the very early universe, naturally meeting tight observational bounds from cosmic microwave background (CMB) experiments. We investigate…
I review recent progress towards a detailed understanding of the power spectrum of cosmic string perturbations induced on the Microwave Background (CMB). The use of a simple analytic model allows to include important effects that have not…
At its very beginning, the universe is believed to have grown exponentially in size via the mechanism of inflation. The almost scale-invariant density perturbation spectrum predicted by inflation is strongly supported by cosmological…
Assuming that the early universe had (i) a description using perturbative string theory and its field theory limit (ii) an epoch of slow-roll inflation within a four-dimensional effective field theory and a hierarchy of scales $M_{inf} <…
We show that double inflation is naturally realized in K\"ahler moduli inflation, which is caused by moduli associated with string compactification. We find that there is a small coupling between the two inflatons which leads to…
An attractive candidate for the inflaton is an axion slowly rolling down a flat potential protected by a perturbative shift symmetry. Realisations of this idea within large field, natural and monomial inflation have been disfavoured by…
Generic features of models of inflation obtained from string compactifications are the correlations between the model parameters and the postinflationary evolution of the universe. Thus, the postinflationary evolution depends on the…
In this paper we argue that the mechanism of unwinding inflation is naturally present in warped compactifications of type IIB string theory with local throats. The unwinding of flux is caused by its annihilation against branes. The…
We study the effects of the interaction terms between the inflaton fields on the inflationary dynamics in multi-field models. With power law type potential and interactions, the total number of e-folds may get considerably reduced and can…
We study thermally induced density perturbations during inflation. This scenario is characterized by two thermodynamical conditions: (1) The primordial perturbations originate in the epoch when the inflationary universe contains a…
We present a new model of string inflation driven by a blow-up K\"ahler modulus of type IIb compactifications with a potential generated by string loops. Slow-roll is naturally realized thanks to the fact that the blow-up mode is a…
The large-scale power deficit in the cosmic microwave background fluctuations might be relevant with the physics of pre-inflation, a bounce, or a superinflationary phase preceding slow-roll inflation, which can provide a singular-free…
A class of well-motivated models of inflation end by producing cosmic strings. The current status of efforts to calculate and observe the signals from such models are outlined, with a particular emphasis on cosmic strings, and on the Cosmic…
The inflationary and pre-inflationary evolution of scalar modes of cosmological perturbations in a closed universe is analyzed for a loop quantum cosmology model with an inflationary regime consistent with the constraints on inflation…
In type IIB Fibre Inflation models the inflaton is a Kaehler modulus which is kinetically coupled to the corresponding axion. In this setup the curvature of the field space induces tachyonic isocurvature perturbations normal to the…
Inflationary models within string theory exhibit unusual scalar field dynamics involving non-minimal kinetic terms and generically referred to as k-inflation. In this situation, the standard slow-roll approach used to determine the behavior…
There is an apparent power deficit relative to the $\Lambda$CDM prediction of the CMB spectrum at large scales, which, though not yet statistically significant, persists from WMAP to Planck data. Proposals that invoke some form of initial…
In models of inflation obtained from string compactification, moduli vacuum misalignment leads to an epoch in the post-inflationary history of the universe when the energy density is dominated by cold moduli particles. This effect leads to…
There is an apparent power deficit relative to the Lambda-CDM prediction of the CMB spectrum at large scales, which, though not yet statistically significant, persists from WMAP to Planck data. We first present a simple toy model…
In a recent paper, we suggested that the density fluctuation spectra arising from power-law (or extended) inflation, which are tilted with respect to the Harrison--Zel'dovich spectrum, may provide an explanation for the excess large scale…