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The recent results of the BICEP and Keck collaborations have put stringent bounds on many inflationary models, including some well-motivated ones. This is certainly the case when gravity remains described by Einstein's theory up to the…
The measurement of a large tensor-to-scalar ratio by the BICEP2 experiment, r = 0.20 (-0.05)(+0.07), severely restricts the landscape of viable inflationary models and shifts attention once more towards models featuring large inflaton field…
The detection of B-mode power spectrum by the BICEP2 collaboration constrains the tensor-to-scalar ratio $r=0.20^{+0.07}_{-0.05}$ for the lensed-$\Lambda$CDM model. The consistency of this big value with the {\em Planck} results requires a…
We consider the effect of a period of inflation with a high energy density upon the stability of the Higgs potential in the early universe. The recent measurement of a large tensor-to-scalar ratio, $r_T \sim 0.16$, by the BICEP-2 experiment…
A corpuscular quantum description of inflation shows that there is no fundamental problem with trans-Planckian excursions of the inflaton field up to about 100 Planck masses, with the upper bound coming from the corpuscular quantum effects.…
We examine observational constraints on single-field inflation in which the inflaton is a composite field stemming from a four-dimensional strongly interacting field theory. We confront the predictions with the Planck and very recent BICEP2…
We study the classic hybrid inflation model in its original and modified forms and show the shape of the inflationary potentials and analyze the amount of primordial gravitational waves each model predicts. We compare the resulting EE-mode…
Generically, the gravitational-wave or tensor-mode contribution to the primordial curvature spectrum of inflation is tiny if the field-range of the inflaton is much smaller than the Planck scale. We show that this pessimistic conclusion is…
The tensor fraction $r\simeq 0.16$ found by BICEP2 corresponds to a Hubble parameter $H\simeq 1.0\times 10^{14}\GeV$ during inflation. This has two implications for the (single-field) slow-roll inflation hypothesis. First, the inflaton…
In the approach of the effective field theory of modified gravity, we derive the second-order action and the equation of motion for tensor perturbations on the flat isotropic cosmological background. This analysis accommodates a wide range…
If cosmological inflation is due to a slowly rolling single inflation field taking trans-Planckian values as suggested by the BICEP2 measurement of primordial tensor modes in CMB, embedding inflation into the Standard Model challenges…
We show that the standard model Higgs field can realize the quadratic chaotic inflation, if the kinetic term is significantly modified at large field values. This is a simple realization of the so-called running kinetic inflation. The point…
The BICEP2 experiment confirms the existence of primordial gravitational wave with the tensor-to-scalar ratio $r=0$ ruled out at $7\sigma$ level. The consistency of this large value of $r$ with the {\em Planck} data requires a large…
We study the effects of non-trivial initial quantum states for inflationary fluctuations within the context of the effective field theory for inflation constructed by Cheung et al. which allows us to discriminate between different initial…
The recent BICEP2 measurement of B-modes in the polarization of the cosmic microwave background suggests that inflation was driven by a field at an energy scale of $2\times 10^{16}$ GeV. I explore the potential of upcoming CMB polarization…
We investigate the validity of effective field theory methods and the decoupling of heavy fields during inflation. Considering models of inflation in which the inflaton is coupled to a heavy (super-Hubble) degree of freedom initially in its…
It is proposed that the recently announced BICEP2 value of tensor-to scalar ratio $r\sim0.2$ can be explained as containing an extra contribution from the recent acceleration of the universe. In fact this contribution, being robust, recent…
To reconcile the BICEP2 measurement on the tensor-to-scalar ratio $r$ with Planck constraint, a large negative running of scalar spectral index $n_s$ is needed. So the inflationary observable such as $n_s$ should be expanded at least to the…
We explore the possibility of a single field quasi-de Sitter inflationary model with general initial state for primordial fluctuations. In this paper, first we compute the power spectrum and the bispectrum of scalar perturbations with…
How sensitive are the predictions of inflation to pre-inflationary conditions when the number of efolds of inflation is not too large? In an attempt to address this question, we consider a simple model where the inflationary era is preceded…