Related papers: Inflating with Large Effective Fields
We consider spatially averaged inhomogeneous universe models and argue that, already in the absence of sources, an effective scalar field arises through foliating and spatially averaging inhomogeneous geometrical curvature invariants of the…
We show that simple strongly coupled supersymmetric gauge theories with quantum moduli spaces can naturally lead to hybrid inflation. These theories contain no input dimensionful or small parameters. The effective superpotential is linear…
In this article, we review how strong dynamics can be efficiently employed as a viable alternative to study the mechanism of cosmic inflation. We examine single-field inflation in which the inflaton emerges as a bound state stemming from…
We investigate the dynamics of the recently proposed model of assisted inflation. In this model an arbitrary number of scalar fields with exponential potentials evolve towards an inflationary scaling solution, even if each of the individual…
We describe the general inflationary dynamics that can arise with a single, canonically coupled field where the inflaton potential is a 4-th order polynomial. This scenario yields a wide range of combinations of the empirical spectral…
Two extensions of ideas lying in the basis of the inflationary scenario of the early Universe and their effect on the large scale structure of the present-day Universe are discussed. The first of them is the possibility of fast phase…
Long standing themes in inflation include the issue of large field vs. small field inflation as well as the question what fraction of phase space leads to sufficient inflation, and furthermore is compatible with the experimental data. In…
We show how backreaction of the inflaton potential energy on heavy scalar fields can flatten the inflationary potential, as the heavy fields adjust to their most energetically favorable configuration. This mechanism operates in previous…
We consider a possibility that one of the flat directions in the minimal supersymmetric standard model plays the role of the inflaton field and realizes large-field inflation. This is achieved by introducing a generalized shift symmetry on…
The general structure of Hybrid Inflation remains a very well-motivated mechanism for lower-scale cosmic inflation in the face of improving constraints on the tensor-to-scalar ratio. However, as originally modeled, the "waterfall" field in…
We analyze the flow into inflation for generic "single-clock" systems, by combining an effective field theory approach with a dynamical-systems analysis. In this approach, we construct an expansion for the potential-like term in the…
Higgs inflation is a simple and elegant model in which early-universe inflation is driven by the Higgs sector of the Standard Model. The Higgs sector can support early-universe inflation if it has a large nonminimal coupling to the Ricci…
An attractive candidate for the inflaton is an axion slowly rolling down a flat potential protected by a perturbative shift symmetry. Realisations of this idea within large field, natural and monomial inflation have been disfavoured by…
In this work we investigate the inflationary era in the presence of a canonical scalar field and Chern-Simons parity violating corrections. It was also assumed that a non minimal coupling between curvature and the scalar field is present.…
We propose a class of inflation models with potential V(\phi)=\alpha \phi^n exp(-\beta^m \phi^m). We show that such kind of inflaton potentials can be realized in supergravity theory with a small shift symmetry breaking term in the K\"ahler…
We revisit the resulting bispectrum of inflation with kinetic-coupled vector fields by organizing the dynamics in terms of $h$, which measures the vector kinetic contribution relative to that of the scalar field. We evaluate the bispectrum…
We investigate the coupling between the inflaton and massive vector fields. All renormalizable couplings with shift symmetry of the inflaton are considered. The massive vector can be decomposed into a scalar mode and a divergence-free…
Within the framework of scalar-tensor theories, we study the conditions that allow single field inflation dynamics on small cosmological scales to significantly differ from that of the large scales probed by the observations of cosmic…
We find multi-scalar effective field theories (EFTs) that can achieve a slow inflationary roll despite having a scalar potential that does not satisfy the usual slow-roll condition (d V)^2 << V^2/Mp^2. They evade the usual slow-roll…
In scalaron-Higgs inflation the Standard Model Higgs boson is non-minimally coupled to gravity and the Einstein-Hilbert action is supplemented by the quadratic scalar curvature invariant. For the quartic Higgs self-coupling $\lambda$ fixed…