Related papers: High-Scale Inflation and the Tensor Tilt

Based on the stochastic gravity, we study the loop corrections to the scalar and tensor perturbations during inflation. Since the loop corrections to scalar perturbations suffer infrared (IR) divergence, we consider the IR regularization to…

During inflation, higher derivative terms in the gravitational action may play a significant role. Building on new stable formulations of four-derivative scalar-tensor theories, we study the impact of these corrections in the case where the…

We derive the first quantum gravitational corrections to the inflationary power spectra for a general single-field scalar-tensor theory which includes a non-minimal coupling to gravity, a non-standard scalar kinetic term and an arbitrary…

In this note we point out that, contrary to the standard point of view, slow roll inflation is due to high gravitational friction. We show that the requirement of slow roll coincides with the requirement of a flat scalar field potential in…

We study models of inflation where the inflaton corresponds to a flat direction in field space and its mass term is generated by gravity mediated soft supersymmetry breaking at high scale. Assuming the inflaton to have non negligible…

The detection of primordial gravitational waves, or tensor perturbations, would be regarded as compelling evidence for inflation. The canonical measure of this is the ratio of tensor to scalar perturbations, r. For single-field slow-roll…

We investigate radiative corrections to the inflaton potential from heavy fields undergoing a fast-roll phase transition. We find that a logarithmic one-loop correction to the inflaton potential involving this field can induce a temporary…

The calculation of scalar gravitational and matter perturbations during multiple-field inflation valid to first order in slow roll is discussed. These fields may be the coordinates of a non-trivial field manifold and hence have non-minimal…

We provide a precise and quantitative holographic description of a class of inflationary slow-roll models. The dual QFT is a deformation of a three-dimensional CFT by a nearly marginal operator, which, in the models we consider, generates…

In arXiv:0908.4089, we have proposed a model where natural inflation is realized on a steep potential as a consequence of the interaction of the inflaton with gauge fields through an axion-like coupling. In the present work we study the…

We present a two stage hybrid inflationary scenario in non-minimal supergravity which can predict values of the tensor-to-scalar ratio of the order of few times 0.01. For the parameters considered, the underlying supersymmetric particle…

We consider low scale slow roll inflation driven by the gauge invariant flat directions {\bf udd} and {\bf LLe} of the Minimally Supersymmetric Standard Model at the vicinity of a saddle point of the scalar potential. We study the stability…

The conventional slow-roll approximation is broken in the so-called "ultra slow-roll" models of inflation, for which the inflaton potential is exactly (or extremely) flat. The interesting nature of (canonical) ultra slow-roll inflation is…

Large field inflation models are favored by the recent BICEP2 that has detected gravitational wave modes generated during inflation. We study general large field inflation models for which the potential contains (constant) quadratic and…

Scattering amplitudes at weak coupling are highly constrained by Lorentz invariance, locality and unitarity, and depend on model details only through coupling constants and particle content. In this paper, we develop an understanding of…

We study multifield contributions to the scalar power spectrum in an ensemble of six-field inflationary models obtained in string theory. We identify examples in which inflation occurs by chance, near an approximate inflection point, and we…

Slow-roll inflation can be studied as an effective field theory. The form of the inflaton potential consistent with the data is V(phi) = N M^4 w(phi/[sqrt{N} M_{Pl}]) where phi is the inflaton field, M is the inflation energy scale, and N ~…

We compute the connected four-point correlation function of the primordial curvature perturbation generated during inflation with standard kinetic terms, where the correlation is established via exchange of a graviton between two pairs of…

We examine theories of gravity which include finitely many coupled scalar fields with arbitrary couplings to the curvature (wavemaps). We show that the most general scalar-tensor $\sigma$-model action is conformally equivalent to general…

We use conformal symmetry to constrain the shape of inflationary correlators in the presence of long-lived vector field perturbations. Applying conformal Ward identities, we derive general expressions, up to amplitudes and normalization…