Related papers: Red and blue tilted tensor spectrum from Gibbons-H…
There are large classes of inflationary models, particularly popular in the context of string theory and brane world approaches to inflation, in which the ratio of linearized tensor to scalar metric fluctuations is very small. In such…
We consider slow-roll inflation for a single scalar field with an arbitrary potential and an arbitrary nonminimal coupling to the Gauss-Bonnet term. By introducing a combined hierarchy of Hubble and Gauss-Bonnet flow functions, we…
If the Standard Model (SM) of elementary particle physics is assumed to hold good to arbitrarily high energies, then, for the best fit values of the parameters, the scalar potential of the Standard Model Higgs field turns negative at a high…
We discuss the possibility of explaining the recent NANOGrav results by inflationary gravitational waves (IGWs) with a blue-tilted primordial spectrum. Although such IGWs can account for the NANOGrav signal without contradicting the upper…
We calculate the bispectrum of scale-invariant tensor modes sourced by spectator SU(2) gauge fields during inflation in a model containing a scalar inflaton, a pseudoscalar axion and SU(2) gauge fields. A large bispectrum is generated in…
In this paper, we explore a novel observational signature of gravitational corrections during slow-roll inflation. We study the coupling of the inflaton field to higher-curvature tensors in models with a minimal breaking of conformal…
Recent BICEP/Keck data on the cosmic microwave background, in combination with previous WMAP and Planck data, impose strong new constraints on the tilt in the scalar perturbation spectrum, $n_s$, as well as the tensor-to-scalar ratio, $r$.…
The BICEP2 experiment has announced a signal for primordial gravity waves with tensor-to-scalar ratio $r=0.2^{+0.07}_{-0.05}$ [arXiv:1403.3985]. There are two ways to reconcile this result with the latest Planck experiment…
In the previous work, a new kind of inflation model was proposed, which has the interesting property that its perturbation equation of motion gets a correction of k^4, due to the non-linearity of the kinetic term. Nonetheless, the…
In this article we present an alternative formalism for the inflationary phenomenology of rescaled Einstein-Gauss-Bonnet models which are in agreement with the GW170817 event. By constraining the propagation velocity of primordial tensor…
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…
In this work, we examine cosmological constraints on models of composite inflation based on the slow-roll approximation by using the recent Planck measurement. We compare the spectral index of curvature perturbation (and its running) and…
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…
Recently, BICEP2 measurements of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) $B$-mode polarization at degree angular scales has indicated the presence of tensor modes with a high tensor-to-scalar ratio of $r=0.2$ when assuming nearly…
We consider trapped inflation in a higher dimensional field space: particle production at a dense distribution of extra species points leads to a terminal velocity at which inflation can be driven in steep potentials. We compute an…
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…
We consider power-law inflation with a Gauss-Bonnet correction inspired by string theory. We analyze the stability of cosmological perturbations and obtain the allowed parameter space. We find that for GB-dominated inflation ultra-violet…
The Bunch-Davies state appears precisely thermal to a free-falling observer in de Sitter space. However, precise thermality is unphysical because it violates energy conservation. Instead, the true spectrum must take a certain different…
In this paper we constrain the cosmological parameters, in particular the tilt of tensor power spectrum, by adopting Background Imaging of Cosmic Extragalactic Polarization (B2), Planck released in 2013 (P13) and Wilkinson Microwaves…
We present new constraints on the spectral index n_T of tensor fluctuations from the recent data obtained by the BICEP2 experiment. We found that the BICEP2 data alone slightly prefers a positive, "blue", spectral index with n_T=1.36\pm0.83…