Related papers: Natural Inflation and Quantum Gravity
Informed by a quantum information perspective, we interpret cosmological expansion of space as growing entanglement between underlying degrees of freedom. In particular, we focus on inflationary cosmology, which, while being a successful…
In this short note we clarify some aspects of the impact that the Weak Gravity Conjecture has on models of (generalized) natural inflation. We address in particular certain technical and conceptual concerns recently raised regarding the…
The Higgs field is an attractive candidate for the inflaton because it is an observationally confirmed fundamental scalar field. Importantly, it can be modeled by the most general renormalizable scalar potential. However, if the classical…
This thesis is dedicated to studying cosmological inflation, which is a period of accelerated expansion in the very early Universe that is required to explain the observed anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background. Inflation, when…
Inflation provides a unified paradigm for understanding the isotropy of the cosmic microwave background (CMB), the flatness problem, and the origin of large-scale structure. Although the physics responsible for inflation is not yet well…
The primordial Universe can be used as a laboratory to set constraints on quantum gravity. In the framework of Loop Quantum Cosmology, we show that such a proposal for quantum gravity not only solves for the big bang singularity issue but…
Cosmic inflation provides a window to the highest energy densities accessible in nature, far beyond those achievable in any realistic terrestrial experiment. Theoretical insights into the inflationary era and its observational probes may…
Inflation in the early Universe is one of the most promising probes of gravity in the high-energy regime. However, observable scales give access to a limited window in the inflationary dynamics. In this essay, we argue that quantum…
In loop quantum gravity, modifications to the geometrical density cause a self-interacting scalar field to accelerate away from a minimum of its potential. In principle, this mechanism can generate the conditions that subsequently lead to…
We develop in this thesis the principles governing the production of our universe's primordial inhomogeneities during its early phase of inflation. As a guiding thread we ask what physics during inflation can lead to perturbations so large…
We review some perturbative results obtained in quantum gravity in an accelerating cosmological background. We then describe a class of non-local, purely gravitational models which have the correct structure to reproduce the leading…
Observations of the cosmic microwave sky are revealing the primordial non-uniformities from which all structure in the Universe grew. The only known physical mechanism for generating the inhomogeneities we see involves the amplification of…
We propose a method to extract predictions from quantum cosmology for inflation that can be confronted with observations. Employing the tunneling boundary condition in quantum geometrodynamics, we derive a probability distribution for the…
We identify a new mechanism in supergravity theories which leads to successful inflation without any need for fine tuning. The simplest model yields a spectrum of density fluctuations tilted away from scale-invariance and negligible…
In this article we review the theory of cosmological inflation with a particular focus on the beautiful connection it provides between the physics of the very small and observations of the very large. We explain how quantum mechanical…
We briefly discuss cosmic inflation, which is the dominant paradigm for the generation of the large scale structure in the Universe and also for arranging for the initial conditions of the hot Big Bang. We then present quintessential…
Inflation provides a natural mechanism to account for the origin of cosmic structures. The generation of primordial inhomogeneities during inflation can be understood via the spontaneous creation of quanta from the vacuum. We show that when…
We present a mechanism for the emergence of cosmic acceleration within the mean-field approximation of Group Field Theory models of quantum gravity. Depending on the interaction type, the resulting cosmological dynamics can either feature a…
The Dark Side of the Universe, which includes the cosmological inflation in the early Universe, the current dark energy and dark matter, can be theoretically described by supergravity, though it is non-trivial. We recall the arguments pro…
The weak gravity conjecture imposes severe constraints on natural inflation. A trans-Planckian axion decay constant can only be realized if the potential exhibits an additional (subdominant) modulation with sub-Planckian periodicity. The…