Related papers: Inflationary tensor fossils in large-scale structu…
We study an inflationary model developed by Kaloper and Sorbo, in which the inflaton is an axion with a sub-Planckian decay constant, whose potential is generated by mixing with a topological 4-form field strength. This gives a 4d…
We study tensor modes in pure natural inflation (arXiv:1706.08522), a recently-proposed inflationary model in which an axionic inflaton couples to pure Yang-Mills gauge fields. We find that the tensor-to-scalar ratio r is naturally bounded…
Measurements of CMB anisotropy and, more recently, polarization have played a very important role allowing precise determination of various parameters of the `standard' cosmological model. The expectation of the paradigm of inflation and…
We consider DHOST inflationary models with a shift symmetry leading to a de Sitter space-time at the background cosmological level. Deviations from scale invariance of the scalar and tensor perturbations follow from the breaking of the…
In this thesis we will primarily demonstrate how additional scalar degrees of freedom - which are motivated from many high-energy embeddings - open up new observational windows onto the physics of inflation. We construct a Bayesian…
Inflationary cosmology proposes that the early Universe undergoes accelerated expansion, driven, in simple scenarios, by a single scalar field, or inflaton. The form of the inflaton potential determines the initial spectra of density…
The nonlinear interaction between one graviton and two scalars is enhanced in specific inflationary models, potentially leading to distinguishable signatures in the bispectrum of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropies. We…
In the model of solid / elastic inflation, inflation is driven by a source that has the field theoretical description of a solid. To allow for prolonged slow roll inflation, the solid needs to be extremely insensitive to the spatial…
We compute the phenomenological signatures of a model (Watanabe et al' 09) of anisotropic inflation driven by a scalar and a vector field. The action for the vector is U(1) invariant, and the model is free of ghost instabilities. A suitable…
We propose a scenario where inflation is driven by non-minimally coupled massive vector fields. In an isotropic homogeneous universe these fields behave in presicely the same way as a massive minimally coupled scalar field. Therefore our…
If the expansion of the early Universe was not close to de Sitter, the statistical imprints of the primordial density perturbation on the cosmic microwave background can be quite different from those derived in slow-roll inflation. In this…
We consider inflation in a universe with a positive cosmological constant and a nonminimally coupled scalar field, in which the field couples both quadratically and quartically to the Ricci scalar. When considered in the Einstein frame and…
The form of the inflationary potential is severely restricted if one requires that it be natural in the technical sense, i.e. terms of unrelated origin are not required to be correlated. We determine the constraints on observables that are…
We discuss the gravitational waves (GW) in the context of vector inflation. We derive the action for tensor perturbations and find that tachyonic instabilities are present in most (but not all) of the inflationary models with large fields.…
It was recently shown that a large value of the tensor to scalar ratio $r$ implies a constraint on the minimum value of the sound speed $c_s$ of primordial curvature perturbations during inflation that is stronger than current bounds coming…
The measurement of B-mode polarization of the cosmic microwave background at large angular scales by the BICEP experiment suggests a stochastic gravitational wave background from early-universe inflation with a surprisingly large amplitude.…
Standard inflationary models yield a characteristic signature of a primordial power spectrum with a red tensor and scalar tilt. Nevertheless, Cannone et al recently suggested that, by breaking the assumption of spatial diffeomorphism…
We consider inflationary models with the inflaton coupled to the Gauss-Bonnet term assuming a special relation $\delta_1=2\lambda\epsilon_1$ between the two slow-roll parameters $\delta_1$ and $\epsilon_1$. For the slow-roll inflation, the…
The inflationary paradigm is an important cornerstone of the concordance cosmological model. However, standard inflation cannot fully address the transition from an early homogeneous and isotropic stage, to another one lacking such…
We derive the power spectra of the scalar- and tensor-type structures generated in a chaotic-type inflation model based on non-minimally coupled scalar field with a self interaction. By comparing contributions of both-structures to the…