Related papers: Inflating with Large Effective Fields
In this paper, we employ the Palatini formalism to investigate the dynamics of large-field inflation using a renormalizable polynomial inflaton potential in the context of $f(R,\phi)$ gravity. Assuming instant reheating, we make a…
Large field inflation models are favored by the recent BICEP2 that has detected gravitational wave modes generated during inflation. We study general large field inflation models for which the potential contains (constant) quadratic and…
If the inflaton is a pseudo-scalar axion, the axion shift symmetry can protect the flatness of its potential from too large radiative corrections. This possibility, known as natural inflation, requires an axion scale which is greater than…
Slow-roll inflation requires the inflaton field to have an exceptionally flat potential, which combined with measurements of the scale of inflation demands some degree of fine-tuning. Alternatively, the flatness of the potential could be…
We consider the effects of inhomogeneous initial conditions in both the scalar field profile and the extrinsic curvature on different inflationary models. In particular, we compare the robustness of small field inflation to that of large…
We study inflationary models in which the effective potential of the inflaton field does not have a minimum, but rather gradually decreases at large $\phi$. In such models the inflaton field does not oscillate after inflation, and its…
Recently we have studied in great detail a model of Hybrid Natural Inflation (HNI) by constructing two simple effective field theories. These two versions of the model allow inflationary energy scales as small as the electroweak scale in…
We construct models of inflation with many randomly interacting fields and use these to study the generation of cosmological observables. We model the potentials as multi-dimensional Gaussian random fields (GRFs) and identify powerful…
We study inflation in a random multifield potential, using techniques developed by Marsh et al. The potential is a function of a large number of fields, and we choose parameters so that inflation only occurs in regions where the potential…
A perturbative strategy for inflation described by two-inflaton fields is developed using a mathematical analogy with the renormalization-group. Two small quantities, $\alpha$ and $\lambda$, corresponding to standard slow-roll parameters…
We consider the dynamics of power-law inflation with a nonminimally coupled scalar field $\phi$. It is well known that multiple scalar fields with exponential potentials $V(\phi)=V_0 {\rm exp}(-\sqrt{16\pi/p m_{\rm pl}^2} \phi)$ lead to an…
We define a new inflationary scenario in which inflation starts naturally after the Big Bang when the energy density drops below some critical value. As a model, we use recently proposed symmetron field whose effective potential depends on…
A pseudo-Nambu-Goldstone boson, with a potential of the form $ V(\phi) = \Lambda^4 [1 + \cos(\phi/f)]$, can naturally give rise to an epoch of inflation in the early universe (Freese, Frieman, and Olinto 1990). The potential is naturally…
The BICEP2 observation of a large tensor-to-scalar ratio, $r = 0.20^{+0.07}_{-0.05}$, implies that the inflaton $\phi$ in single-field inflation models must satisfy $\phi \sim 10M_{Pl}$ in order to produce sufficient inflation. This is a…
We elaborate on a minimal inflation scenario based entirely on the general properties of supersymmetry breaking in supergravity models. We identify the inflaton as the scalar component of the Goldstino superfield. We write plausible…
The calculation of scalar gravitational and matter perturbations during multiple-field inflation valid to first order in slow roll is discussed. These fields may be the coordinates of a non-trivial field manifold and hence have non-minimal…
A safe way to reheat the universe, in models of natural and quadratic inflation, is through shift symmetric couplings between the inflaton $\phi$ and the Standard Model (SM), since they do not generate loop corrections to the potential…
We study an inflationary scenario where thermal inflation is followed by fast-roll inflation. This is a rather generic possibility based on the effective potentials of spontaneous symmetry breaking in the context of particle physics models.…
It has been shown that hybrid inflation may end with the formation of non-topological solitons of inflaton field. As a first step towards a fully realistic picture of the post-inflation era and reheating in supersymmetric hybrid inflation…
One of the fundamental objectives of contemporary cosmology is to understand the physics of the inflationary universe, owing to its observably verifiable predictions about the very early universe with an energy scale of $\sim 10^{16}$ GeV.…