Related papers: BICEP2 in Corpuscular Description of Inflation
In the present paper we discuss how trans-Planckian physics affects inflationary vacuum fluctuations and primordial density perturbations. The trans-Planckian problem during inflation has been widely discussed in literature, but it is still…
We discuss a new scenario for early cosmology, when inflationary de Sitter phase dynamically emergent. This genuine quantum effect occurs as a result of dynamics of the topologically nontrivial sectors in a (conjectured) strongly coupled…
Extensions of the Standard Model and general relativity featuring a UV fixed point can leave observable implications at accessible energies. Although mass parameters such as the Planck scale can appear through dimensional transmutation, all…
In this paper my prime objective is to analyze the constraints on a sub-Planckian excursion of a single inflaton field within Effective Field Theory framework in a model independent fashion. For a generic single field inflationary…
The BICEP2 observations, if confirmed, point to a high scale of inflation and large field excursions during the inflationary era. Non-compact string moduli spaces are a suggestive setting for these phenomena. While unlikely to be described…
The recent BICEP2 detection of, what is claimed to be primordial $B$-modes, opens up the possibility of constraining not only the energy scale of inflation but also the detailed acceleration history that occurred during inflation. In turn…
We provide a detailed study of natural inflation with a periodic non-minimal coupling, which is a well-motivated inflationary model that admits an explicit UV completion. We demonstrate that this construction can satisfy the most recent…
It was recently proposed that a field theory cannot be consistent with quantum gravity if it allows a mode shorter than the Planck length to exit the Hubble horizon. This is called the Trans-Planckian Censorship Conjecture (TCC). We discuss…
Last year we argued that if slow-roll inflation followed the decay of a false vacuum in a large landscape, the steepening of the scalar potential between the inflationary plateau and the barrier generically leads to a potentially observable…
These lecture notes have been written for a short introductory course on the status of inflation after Planck and BICEP2, given at the Xth Modave School of Mathematical Physics. The first objective is to give an overview of the theory of…
In the lights of current BICEP2 observations accompanied with the PLANCK satellite results, it has been observed that the simple single field chaotic inflationary models provide a good agreement with their spectral index n_s and large…
The CMB map provided by the Planck project constrains the value of the ratio of tensor-to-scalar perturbations, namely $r$, to be smaller than $0.11$ (95% CL). This bound rules out the simplest models of inflation. However, recent data from…
Large-field inflation is a major class of inflation models featuring a near- or super-Planckian excursion of the inflaton field. We point out that the large excursion generically introduces significant scale dependence to spectator fields…
In most current models of inflation based on a weakly self-coupled scalar matter field minimally coupled to gravity, the period of inflation lasts so long that, at the beginning of the inflationary period, the physical wavelengths of…
We present the first quantum field theory model of inflation that is renormalizable in the matter sector, with a super-Hubble inflaton mass and sub-Planckian field excursions, which is thus technically natural and consistent with a…
We show that in any model of non-eternal inflation satisfying the null energy condition, the area of the de Sitter horizon increases by at least one Planck unit in each inflationary e-folding. This observation gives an operational meaning…
A model of high scale inflation is presented where the radial part of the Peccei-Quinn (PQ) field with a non-minimal coupling to gravity plays the role of the inflaton, and the QCD axion is the dark matter. A quantum fluctuation of…
In this paper we report on a major theoretical observation in cosmology. We present a concrete cosmological model for which inflation has natural beginning and natural ending. Inflation is driven by a cosine-form potential, $V(\phi)=…
Within the framework of the scalar-tensor theory we consider a hill-climbing inflation, in which the effective Planck mass increases in time. We obtain the Einstein frame potential with infinitely long and flat plateau as we approach…
The magnitude of primordial tensor perturbations reported by the BICEP2 experiment is consistent with simple models of chaotic inflation driven by a single scalar field with a power-law potential \propto \phi^n: n \simeq 2, in contrast to…