Related papers: Whipped inflation
The primordial spectrum of fluctuations may present a large peak as a result of enhancing features during inflation. This may include, but is not limited to, bumps in the inflaton's potential, phases of ultra-slow-roll or turns in…
We study models of inflation where the inflaton corresponds to a flat direction in field space and its mass term is generated by gravity mediated soft supersymmetry breaking at high scale. Assuming the inflaton to have non negligible…
We consider a quantum corrected inflation scenario driven by a generic GUT or Standard Model type particle model whose scalar field playing the role of an inflaton has a strong non-minimal coupling to gravity. We show that currently widely…
We consider the spectrum of primordial fluctuations produced by inflationary models where the inflaton potential is the sum of two exponential terms. A wide range of spectra result, with the only constraint being that the scalar spectrum…
We describe models of single-field inflation with small and sharp step features in the potential (and sound speed) of the inflaton field, in the context of the Effective Field Theory of Inflation. This approach allows us to study the…
The inflaton field responsible for inflation may not be a canonical fundamental scalar. It is possible that the inflaton is a composite of fermions or it may have a decay width. In these cases the standard procedure for calculating the…
Suppression of the scalar power spectrum on large scales is one way to reconcile the tension between Planck and BICEP2 data. This suppression can occur by introducing a phase transition from the fast-roll phase to the slow-roll phase in a…
If the large scale anomalies in the temperature power spectrum of the cosmic microwave background are of primordial origin, they may herald modifications to the slow roll inflationary paradigm on the largest scales. We study the possibility…
We consider cosmological inflation generated by a scalar field slowly rolling off from a de Sitter maximum of its potential. The models belong to the class of hilltop models and represent the most general model of this kind in which the…
We revisit the status of hybrid inflation in the light of Planck and recent BICEP2 results, taking care of possible transient violations of the slow-roll conditions as the field passes from the large field to the vacuum dominated phase. The…
Slow-roll inflation is studied as an effective field theory.We find as consistent form of the inflaton potential V(phi)=N M^4 w(phi/[sqrt{N}M_P]) where phi is the inflaton field, M the inflation energy scale, M_P the Planck mass, and N~50…
We analyze quantum corrections on the naive $\phi^4$-Inflation. These typically lead to an inflaton potential which carries a non-integer power of the field. We consider both minimal and non-minimal couplings to gravity. For the latter case…
In the context of single field inflation, models with a quadratic potential and models with a natural potential with subplanckian decay constant are in tension with the Planck data. We show that, when embedded in a two-field model with an…
Inflation generally assumes a field with nonzero potential that leads to inflationary expansion happening at arbitrarily early times. We demonstrate potentially observable consequences of inflation with a finite initial time in a model in…
We have investigated a number of GUT models for the possibility that their Higgs fields might be responsible for inflation in the early universe. In addition to models having an intrinsic Planck mass parameter, we have entertained…
We show how general initial conditions for small field inflation can be obtained in multi-field models. This is provided by non-linear angular friction terms in the inflaton that provide a phase of non-slow-roll inflation before the…
The effect of the initial condition of inflation on the power spectra of scalar and tensor perturbations is estimated assuming a slow-roll inflation model. By defining a more general initial state in inflation particular properties of the…
Cosmological perturbations, originating in the quantum fluctuations of the fields that drive inflation, are observed to be nearly scale invariant at the largest scales. At smaller scales, however, perturbations are not severely constrained…
Inflection-point inflation is an interesting possibility to realize a successful slow-roll inflation when inflation is driven by a single scalar field with its initial value below the Planck mass ($\phi_I \lesssim M_{Pl}$). In order for a…
We study Quadratic Inflation with the inflaton field $\phi$ coupled non-minimally to the curvature scalar $R$, so that the potential during inflation is of the form $V\propto m^2\phi^2+\xi R\phi^2$. We show that with a suitable choice of…