Related papers: On Axionic Field Ranges, Loopholes and the Weak Gr…
We consider, in the context of axion-inflation, the \textit{Pure Natural Inflation} (PNI) model coupled with an SU(2) gauge sector via a Chern-Simons term. As the axion rolls down its potential, it dissipates energy in the gauge sector thus…
Over the last four decades, a number of modified gravity theories have been proposed to study cosmological phenomena as they can provide solutions for some of the shortcomings of Einstein's gravity in explaining early and late time…
This paper provides a systematic study of supergravity contributions relevant for inflationary model building in Jordan frame supergravity. In this framework, canonical kinetic terms in the Jordan frame result in the separation of the…
We study inflation driven by a slow-rolling inflaton field, characterised by a quadratic potential, and incorporating radiative corrections within the context of supergravity. In this model the energy scale of inflation is not overly…
It is shown that the squeezed limit of inflationary expectation values follows from reparametrization invariance of the wavefunction of the universe. This translates into a constraint on the longitudinal modes of functional derivatives of…
We point out that the swampland conjectures, forbidding the presence of global symmetries and (meta-)stable de Sitter vacua within quantum gravity, pick up a dynamical axion for the electroweak SU(2) gauge theory as a natural candidate for…
The motion of a pseudo-scalar field $X$ during inflation naturally induces a significant amplification of the gauge fields to which it is coupled. The amplified gauge fields can source characteristic scalar and tensor primordial…
We provide a detailed study of natural inflation with a periodic non-minimal coupling, which is a well-motivated inflationary model that admits an explicit UV completion. We demonstrate that this construction can satisfy the most recent…
The next generation of gravitational wave detectors holds out the prospect of detecting a stochastic gravitational background generated in the very early universe. In this article, we review the various cosmological processes which can lead…
In this review, we discuss inflation models based on supergravity. After explaining the difficulties in realizing inflation in the context of supergravity, we show how to evade such difficulties. Depending on types of inflation, we give…
The QCD axion solves the strong CP problem and represents an attractive particle candidate for cold dark matter (CDM). However, quantum fluctuations of the axion field during inflation easily result in large CDM isocurvature perturbations…
Inflation with tunneling from a false to a true vacuum becomes viable in the presence of a scalar field that slows down the initial de Sitter phase. As a by-product this field also sets dynamically the value of the Newton constant observed…
We have investigated the necessary conditions that prevent phantom inflation from being eternal. Allowing additionally for a nonminimal coupling between the phantom field and gravity, we present the slow-climb requirements, perform an…
The mild form of the Weak Gravity Conjecture states that quantum or higher-derivative corrections should decrease the mass of large extremal charged black holes at fixed charge. This allows extremal black holes to decay, unless protected by…
Quantum gravitational back-reaction offers the potential of simultaneously resolving the problem of the cosmological constant and providing a natural model of inflation in which scalars play no special role. In this model inflation begins…
We briefly discuss some possible cosmological implications of noncommutative geometry. While the noncommutativity we consider does not affect gravity, it can play an important role in the dynamics of other fields that are present in the…
During single clock inflation, hidden fields (i.e. fields coupled to the inflaton only gravitationally) in their adiabatic vacua can ordinarily only affect observables through virtual effects. After renormalizing background quantities…
Theories where the Planck scale is dynamically generated from dimensionless interactions provide predictive inflationary potentials and super-Planckian field variations. We first study the minimal single-field realisation in the low-energy…
We revisit the isocurvature density perturbations induced by quantum fluctuations of the axion field by extending a recently developed analytic method and approximations to a time-dependent scalar potential, which enables us to follow the…
Heavy isocurvature fields may have a strong influence on the low energy dynamics of curvature perturbations during inflation, as long as the inflationary trajectory becomes non-geodesic in the multi-field target space (the landscape). If…