Related papers: Early inflation induced gravity waves can restrict…
We consider string and supergravity motivated scenarios in which moduli fields dominate the energy density of the Universe in a post-inflationary epoch. For the case of a single light modulus it has been shown that considering the evolution…
We investigate the reach of future gravitational wave (GW) detectors in probing inflaton couplings with visible sector particles that can either be bosonic or fermionic in nature. Assuming reheating takes place through perturbative quantum…
Recent large scale structure observations, including COBE, have prompted many authors to discuss modifications of the standard Cold Dark Matter model. Two of these, a tilted spectrum and a gravitational wave contribution to COBE, are at…
We calculate the upper bound on the reheating temperature given the non-observation of gravitational waves if the number of efolds during inflation are the minimum number required to address the horizon problem as formulated in terms of…
There is a large and growing interest in observations of small-scale structure in dark matter. We propose a new way to probe dark matter structures in the $\sim 10 - 10^8 \, M_\odot$ range. This allows us to constrain the primordial power…
A stochastic background of primordial gravitational waves could be detected soon in the polarization of the CMB and/or with laser interferometers. There are at least three GWB coming from inflation: those produced during inflation and…
We consider the impact of thermal inflation -- a short, secondary period of inflation that can arise in supersymmetric scenarios -- on the stochastic gravitational wave background. We show that while the primordial inflationary…
It is argued that the entropy bound places an upper limit of about 1 TeV on the temperature of the last reheating era in the early Universe. Implications for inflation and non-standard paradigms for beyond the standard model of hot…
Recent theoretical results indicate that the detection of primordial gravity waves from inflation may be a hopeless task. First, foregrounds from lensing put a strict lower limit on the detectability of the B-mode polarization signal in the…
We investigate the relic density n_\chi of non-relativistic long-lived or stable particles \chi in non-standard cosmological scenarios. We calculate the relic abundance starting from arbitrary initial temperatures of the radiation-dominated…
In a mixed dark matter scenario in which primordial black holes (PBHs) would co-exist with thermally produced self-annihilating particles, one expects the former to be surrounded by extremely dense halos made of the latter, built up during…
We propose a scenario for inflation based upon the braneworld picture, in which high-energy corrections to the Friedmann equation permit inflation to take place with potentials ordinarily too steep to sustain it. Inflation ends when the…
A thermal gravitational wave background can be produced in the early Universe if a radiation dominated epoch precedes the usual inflationary stage. This background provides a unique way to study the initial state of the Universe. We discuss…
We investigate the constraint on the abundance of primordial black holes (PBHs) and the spectral index $n$ of primeval density perturbations given by the ionizing photon background at the epoch of reionization. Within the standard…
The discovery of the primordial B-mode polarisation by the BICEP2 experiment indicates inflation with a relatively high energy scale. Taking this indication into account, we propose consistent scenarios to account for the observed baryon…
Analyses of inflation models are usually conducted assuming a specific range---e.g., $N_k \simeq 50-60$--of the number $N_k$ of $e$-folds of inflation. However, the analysis can also be performed by taking into account constraints imposed…
The reheating of the universe after hybrid inflation proceeds through the nucleation and subsequent collision of large concentrations of energy density in the form of bubble-like structures moving at relativistic speeds. This generates a…
One of the most important issues in an inflationary theory as standard or quintessential inflation is the mechanism to reheat the universe after the end of the inflationary period in order to match with the Hot Big Bang universe. In…
TeV string-mass-scale strings have been excluded experimentally at colliders, as their effects have not been observed at the Large Hadron Collider (CERN). On the other hand, higher-scale string theory, with mass scales typically close to…
The temperature perturbations of the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB) appear systematically suppressed, at large angular scales, with respect to the prediction of the LambdaCDM concordance model. This behavior might be a glimpse…