Related papers: The tensor bi-spectrum in a matter bounce
The singularity and inflationary problems have posed significant challenges for understanding the universe's origin and evolution. Bouncing cosmology has emerged as a promising alternative to standard cosmological models, offering a…
In hep-th/0508194 it was shown how non-perturbative corrections to gravity can resolve the big bang singularity, leading to a bouncing universe. Depending on the scale of the non-perturbative corrections, the temperature at the bounce may…
Future cosmic microwave background polarization experiments will search for evidence of primordial tensor modes at large angular scales, in the multipole range $4 \leq \ell \leq 50.$ Because in that range there is some mild evidence of…
We study the mixed scalar-tensor two-point function in icosahedral inflation. Within the regime of validity of the effective field theory, this has to be perturbatively small; in particular, much smaller than the scalar spectrum. However,…
Next-to-leading order expressions related to Stewart-Lyth inverse problem are used to determine the inflationary models with a tensorial power spectrum described by a scale-invariant spectral index. Beyond power-law inflation, solutions are…
The BICEP2 collaboration reports a detection of primordial cosmic microwave background (CMB) B-mode with a tensor-scalar ratio $r=0.20^{+0.07}_{-0.05}$ (68% C.L.). However, this result is in tension with the recent Planck limit, $r<0.11$…
A sufficiently rigid relativistic elastic solid can be stable for negative pressure values and thus is capable of driving a stage of accelerated expansion. If a relativistic elastic solid drove an inflationary stage in the early Universe,…
We employ the formalism of the effective field theory of inflation to study the effects of a sudden change in the speed of sound of the inflationary perturbations. Such an event generates a feature with high frequency oscillations both in…
An extremely fast exponential expansion of the Universe is typical for the stable version of the inflationary model, based on the anomaly-induced action of gravity. The total amount of exponential $e$-folds could be very large, before the…
It has recently been shown that a Hagedorn phase of string gas cosmology can provide a causal mechanism for generating a nearly scale-invariant spectrum of scalar metric fluctuations, without the need for an intervening period of de Sitter…
We demonstrate that the strict upper bounds on the energy scale of inflation and on the tensor-to-scalar ratio can be somewhat relaxed if we assume that - after an initial period of slow rolling when scales probed today in CMB experiments…
The newly released Planck CMB data place tight constraints on slow-roll inflationary models. Some of commonly discussed inflationary potentials are disfavored due mainly to the large tensor-to-scalar ratio. In this paper we show that these…
We propose a new version of the hybrid inflation scenario that produces a significantly tilted n>1 spectrum of curvature perturbations. This may happen in supersymmetric models where the inflaton field acquires a mass proportional to the…
Non-attractor models of inflation are characterized by the super-horizon evolution of curvature perturbations, introducing a violation of the non-Gaussian consistency relation between the bispectrum's squeezed limit and the power spectrum's…
It was recently shown that a large value of the tensor to scalar ratio $r$ implies a constraint on the minimum value of the sound speed $c_s$ of primordial curvature perturbations during inflation that is stronger than current bounds coming…
We study primordial non-gaussianity in supersolid inflation. The dynamics of supersolid is formulated in terms of an effective field theory based on four scalar fields with a shift symmetric action minimally coupled with gravity. In the…
We investigate the inflationary universe in a theory where two scalar fields non-minimally coupling to the scalar curvature and an extra $R^2$ term exist and the conformal invariance is broken. In particular, the slow-roll inflation is…
In string theory, the traditional picture of a Universe that emerges from the inflation of a very small and highly curved space-time patch is a possibility, not a necessity: quite different initial conditions are possible, and not…
We develop a scenario of inflation with spontaneously broken time and space diffeomorphisms, with distinctive features for the primordial tensor modes. Inflationary tensor fluctuations are non adiabatic, and can acquire a mass during the…
Ultra slow-roll inflation has recently been used to challenge the non-Gaussianity consistency relation. We show that this inflationary scenario belongs to a one parameter class of models and we study its properties and observational…