Related papers: CMB anomalies from an inflationary model in string…
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…
Many models of supersymmetry breaking involve particles with weak scale mass and Planck mass suppressed couplings. Coherent production of such particles in the early universe destroys the successful predictions of nucleosynthesis. We show…
We analyse the efficiency of future large scale structure surveys to unveil the presence of scale dependent features in the primordial spectrum --resulting from cosmic inflation-- imprinted in the distribution of galaxies. Features may…
Within the effective field theory of inflation, an initialization of the classical dynamics of the inflaton with approximate equipartition between the kinetic and potential energy of the inflaton leads to a brief fast roll stage that…
This review article aims at presenting the theory of inflation. We first describe the background spacetime behavior during the slow-roll phase and analyze how inflation ends and the Universe reheats. Then, we present the theory of…
I present a pedagogical review of inflation and the cosmic microwave background. I describe how a short period of accelerated expansion can replace the special initial conditions of the standard big bang model. I also describe the…
The power spectrum of the cosmic microwave background from both the Planck and WMAP data exhibits a slight dip in for multipoles in the range of l=10-30. We show that such a dip could be the result of resonant creation of a massive particle…
It is commonly assumed that the stochastic background of gravitational waves on cosmological scales follows an almost scale-independent power spectrum, as generically predicted by the inflationary paradigm. However, it is not inconceivable…
We consider that the pre-inflation era is radiation-dominated, transiting smoothly to the inflationary era. We work out in detail the dynamics of inflaton fluctuations across the phase transition and the proper choices of initial vacuum…
We study temperature and polarization anisotropies of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation sourced from primordial cross-bispectra between metric perturbations and vector fields, which are generated from the inflation model where…
Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) is an important probe for understanding the inflationary era of the Universe. We consider the Perturbed Power Law (PPL) model of inflation which is a soft deviation from Power Law (PL) inflationary model.…
We investigate the formation of large peaks in the inflationary curvature power spectrum from double-well potentials. In such scenarios, the initial CMB spectrum is created at large field values. Subsequently, the inflaton will cross one of…
We propose a $\Lambda$-inflation model which explains a large fraction of the COBE signal by cosmic gravitational waves. The primordial density perturbations fulfil both the contraints of large-scale microwave background and galaxy cluster…
We provide a pedagogical overview of inflation in string theory. Our theme is the sensitivity of inflation to Planck-scale physics, which we argue provides both the primary motivation and the central theoretical challenge for the subject.…
Cosmic inflation, a period of accelerated expansion in the early universe, can give rise to large amplitude ultra-large scale inhomogeneities on distance scales comparable to or larger than the observable universe. The cosmic microwave…
Conformal embedding of closed-universe models in a de Sitter background suggests a quantisation condition on the available conformal time. This condition implies that the universe is closed at no greater than the 10% level. When a massive…
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…
The recent observation of the cosmic microwave background anisotropy by the WMAP confirmed that the lower multipoles are considerably suppressed. From the standpoint of the cosmic variance, it is nothing but a statistical accident.…
Cosmic string networks generate cosmological perturbations actively throughout the history of the universe. Thus, the string sourced anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background is not affected by Silk damping as much as the anisotropy…
The residuals of the power spectra of WMAP and Planck's cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropies data are known to exhibit a few interesting anomalies at different scales with marginal statistical significance. Combining bottom-up and…