Related papers: Perspective on completing natural inflation
We study symmetry breaking and topological defects in a supersymmetric model with gauge group $\text{U}(2)$, which can be identified with the right-handed part $\text{SU}(2)_R \times \text{U}(1)_{B-L}$ of an extended electroweak symmetry of…
Two distinct classes of realistic inflationary models consistent with present observations are reviewed. The first example relies on the Coleman-Weinberg potential and is readily realized within the framework of spontaneously broken global…
We study a string theory inspired model for hybrid inflation in the context of a brane-antibrane system partially compactified on a compact submanifold of (a caricature of) a Calabi-Yau manifold. The interbrane distance acts as the…
We describe a two-field model that generalizes Natural Inflation, in which the inflaton is the pseudo-Goldstone boson of an approximate symmetry that is spontaneously broken, and the radial mode is dynamical. We analyze how the dynamics…
In this PhD thesis, we investigate generic features of inflation which are strictly related to fundamental aspects of UV-physics scenarios, such as string theory or supergravity. After a short introduction to standard and inflationary…
Recent developments on large scale string moduli stabilization via non-geometric fluxes are reviewed. In the framework of type IIB orientifolds on fluxed Calabi-Yau manifolds, the existence of so-called flux-scaling minima provides a good…
We derive exact and closed-form expressions for a large class of two-point and three-point inflation correlators with the tree-level exchange of a single massive particle. The intermediate massive particle is allowed to have arbitrary mass,…
Based on the flux-scaling scenario we study a model consisting on Type IIB string theory compactified on a Calabi-Yau manifold with a frozen complex structure in the presence of generic fluxes. The model contains (meta)stable Minkowski and…
An inflationary scenario is expected to be embedded into an ultraviolet (UV) complete theory such as string theory. The effect of UV complete theories may appear as nontrivial kinetic terms in the low energy effective field theory, which…
Inflationary scenarios in string theory often involve a large number of light scalar fields, whose presence can enrich the post-inflationary evolution of primordial fluctuations generated during the inflationary epoch. We provide a simple…
Compactification and symmetry breaking events in theories of heterotic superstrings implicitly indicate five inflation events. Scales of 10^{9} ly and larger are modeled in terms of these events. The proposed model accounts qualitatively…
We study cosmological inflation within a recently proposed framework of perturbative moduli stabilisation in type IIB/F theory compactifications on Calabi-Yau threefolds. The stabilisation mechanism utilises three stacks of magnetised…
We present a new mechanism for slow-roll inflation based on higher dimensional supersymmetric gauge theory compactified to four dimensions with twisted (supersymmetry breaking) boundary conditions. These boundary conditions lead to a…
The shift-symmetric coupling of a pseudo-scalar particle driving inflation to gauge fields provides a unique way of probing cosmic inflation. We show for an SU(2) gauge group how a classical isotropic background gauge field develops from…
We construct supersymmetric unified models which automatically lead to a period of inflation. The models all involve a U(1) symmetry which does not belong to the MSSM. We consider three different types of models depending on whether this…
We develop the path integral formalism for studying cosmological perturbations in multi-field inflation, which is particularly well suited to study quantum theories with gauge symmetries such as diffeomorphism invariance. We formulate the…
Higgs inflation is known to be a minimal extension of the Standard Model allowing for the description of the early Universe inflation. This model is considered as an effective field theory since it has a relatively low cutoff scale, thus…
We study a particular supersymmetric realization of the Peccei-Quinn symmetry which provides a suitable candidate for the curvaton field. The class of models considered also solves the mu problem, while generating the Peccei-Quinn scale…
Theories with elementary scalar degrees of freedom seem nowadays required for simple descriptions of the Standard Model and of the Early Universe. It is then natural to embed theories of inflation in supergravity, also in view of their…
Inflation due to a non-minimally coupled scalar field with a large non-minimal coupling, as first proposed by Salopek, Bardeen and Bond (SBB), is in good agreement with the observed value of the spectral index and constraints on the…