Related papers: Disentangling the $f(R)$ - Duality
Inflation is well known to be difficult in the context of supergravity, if the potential is dominated by the $F$ term. Non-renormalizable terms generically give $|V''|\sim V/M^2$, where $V(\phi)$ is the inflaton potential and $M$ is the…
We study the scalar potentials that arise from higher curvature corrections in general $f(R)$ theories of gravity and their connection to a dynamical species scale. Starting from general considerations in arbitrary dimensions, we show that…
An appealing explanation for the Planck data is provided by inflationary models with a singular non-canonical kinetic term: a Laurent expansion of the kinetic function translates into a potential with a nearly shift-symmetric plateau in…
Higher-order theories of gravity are a branch of modified gravity wherein the geometrodynamics of the four-dimensional Riemannian manifold is determined by field equations involving derivatives of the metric tensor of order higher than two.…
We clarify inflaton models by considering them as effective field theories in the Ginzburg-Landau spirit.In this new approach, the precise form of the inflationary potential is constructed from the present WMAP data, and a useful scheme is…
Motivated by the ultraviolet complete theory of quantum gravity, for example the string theory, we investigate a polynomial $f(R )$ inflation model in detail. We calculate the spectral index and tensor-to-scalar ratio in the $f(R )$…
Based on a previously derived superstring model possessing a cosmological sector that mimics Starobinsky inflation, we analyze several questions addressed in the recent literature: the generation of an effective $R^2$-term, the stability of…
We show that a particular class of effective low energy supergravity theories motivated by string theory can provide a promising framework for models of hybrid inflation in which the potential energy which drives inflation originates from…
We consider the large-scale cosmic structure generation by an inflation based on a pure f(R)-type gravity theory. Comparison with recent CMBR observations gives the following results: (1) The near Zel'dovich spectral conditions uniquely…
We discuss the initial conditions problem for inflation driven by the vacuum energy of a plateau potential, and in particular the Starobinsky inflation. We show that the supergravity embedding of the $R+R^2$ theory naturally decreases the…
We study scalar field inflation in $F(R)$ gravity in the Palatini formulation of general relativity. Unlike in the metric formulation, in the Palatini formulation $F(R)$ gravity does not introduce new degrees of freedom. However, it changes…
We investigate the possible influence of very-high-energy physics on inflationary predictions focussing on whether effective field theories can allow effects which are parametrically larger than order H^2/M^2, where M is the scale of heavy…
Two of the most attractive realizations of inflation in supergravity are based upon the presence of a constant Fayet-Iliopoulos (FI) term. In D-term hybrid inflation it is the FI term itself which sets the energy scale of inflation.…
The curvature singularity problem in $f(R)$ dark energy models poses a significant challenge to their viability as alternatives to the $\Lambda$CDM paradigm. In this work, we investigate the possibility of resolving this issue by…
We emphasize the importance of effects from heavy fields on supergravity models of inflation. We study, in particular, the backreaction of stabilizer fields and geometric moduli in the presence of supersymmetry breaking. Many effects do not…
In the context of single field inflation, models with a quadratic potential and models with a natural potential with subplanckian decay constant are in tension with the Planck data. We show that, when embedded in a two-field model with an…
We analyse $f(R)$ theories of gravity from a dynamical system perspective, showing how the $R^2$ correction in Starobinsky's model plays a crucial role from the viewpoint of the inflationary paradigm. Then, we propose a modification of…
We examine the role of using symmetry and effective field theory in inflationary model building. We describe the standard formulation of starting with an approximate shift symmetry for a scalar field, and then introducing corrections…
Models of inflationary cosmology based on spontaneous symmetry breaking typically suffer from the shortcoming that the symmetry breaking scale is driven to nearly the Planck scale by observational constraints. In this paper we investigate…
A generic feature of viable $F(R)$ gravity is investigated: It is demonstrated that during the matter dominated era the large frequency oscillations of the effective dark energy may influence the behavior of higher derivatives of the Hubble…