Related papers: A New Angle on Chaotic Inflation
Heavy scalar fields can undergo an instability during inflation as a result of their kinetic couplings with the inflaton. This is known as the geometrical destabilization of inflation, as it relies on the effect of the negative curvature of…
Usual inflation is realized with a slow rolling scalar field minimally coupled to gravity. In contrast, we consider dynamics of a scalar with a flat effective potential, conformally coupled to gravity. Surprisingly, it contains an attractor…
When Inflation is embedded in a fundamental theory, such as string theory, it typically begins when the Universe is already substantially larger than the fundamental scale [such as the one defined by the string length scale]. This is…
The supergravity (SUGRA) theories with exact global $U(1)$ symmetry or shift symmetry in K\"ahler potential provide the natural frameworks for inflation. However, the quadratic inflation is disfavoured by the new results on primordial…
The recent measurements of cosmological parameters by the Planck collaboration favors inflationary models with a redshifted spectrum and a very low tensor-to-scalar ratio. Two well-studied scenarios in the particle physics/string theory…
A supersymmetric inflationary stage dominated by an $F$-term has the problem that the flatness of the potential is spoiled by supergravity corrections, that is the slow-roll parameter $\eta$ gets contributions of order unity. We show that…
A model of natural inflation with an effectively trans-Planckian decay constant can be easily achieved by the "phase locking" mechanism while keeping field values in the effective field theory within the Planck scale. We give detailed…
We study a realization of the inflationary scenario where the Peccei-Quinn (PQ) symmetry is spontaneously broken during inflation, facilitated by its non-minimal coupling to gravity. This results in effectively two-field inflation: the…
We analyze various phases of inflation based on the anomaly-induced effective action of gravity (modified Starobinsky model), taking the cosmological constant Lambda and k=0, +/- 1 topologies into account. The total number of the…
We describe a simple mechanism that can lead to inflation within string-based brane-world scenarios. The idea is to start from a supersymmetric configuration with two parallel static Dp-branes, and slightly break the supersymmetry…
At finite temperature, the coupling of an axion to non-Abelian gauge fields causes dissipation due to sphaleron heating. This mechanism has been considered as ideal for realizing warm inflation since it can lead to large thermal friction…
The scale at which supersymmetry is broken and the mechanism by which supersymmetry breaking is fed down to the observable sector has rich implications on the way Nature may have chosen to accomplish inflation. We discuss a simple model for…
We perform a general algebraic analysis on the possibility of realising slow-roll inflation in the moduli sector of string models. This problem turns out to be very closely related to the characterisation of models admitting metastable…
Inflation near a maximum of the potential is studied when non-local derivative operators are included in the inflaton Lagrangian. Such terms can impose additional sources of friction on the field. For an arbitrary spacetime geometry, these…
Constructing models of inflation and/or baryogenesis in the context of N=1 supergravity is known to be difficult as the finite energy density during inflation typically generates large (order the Hubble scale) mass terms. This is the…
We show how a radiation dominated universe subject to space-time quantization may give rise to inflation as the radiation temperature exceeds the Planck temperature. We consider dispersion relations with a maximal momentum (i.e. a mimimum…
We search for effective axions with super-Planckian decay constants in type IIB string models. We argue that such axions can be realised as long winding trajectories in complex-structure moduli space by an appropriate flux choice. Our main…
We derive the requirements that a generic axion-like field has to satisfy in order to play the role of the inflaton field in the warm inflation scenario. Compared to the parameter space in ordinary natural inflation models, we find that the…
In standard multi-field models, tachyonic isocurvature perturbations generally indicate the presence of an instability. We revisit the stability of some known counterexamples and show that, in a certain class of models that we call ultra…
Shift-symmetry is essential to protect the flatness of the potential, even beyond the super-Planckian vacuum expectation value (VEV) for an inflaton field. The breaking of the shift-symmetry can yield potentials suitable for super-Planckian…