Related papers: Microscopic Origin of Volume Modulus Inflation
We investigate the possibility that the Universe may inflate due to moduli fields, corresponding to flat directions of supersymmetry, lifted by supergravity corrections. Using a hybrid-type potential we obtain a two-stage inflationary…
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…
We consider models of inflation in supergravity with a shift symmetry. We focus on models with one moduli and one inflaton field. The presence of this symmetry guarantees the existence of a flat direction for the inflaton field. Mildly…
Processes of particle production during inflation can increase the amplitude of the scalar metric perturbations. We show that such a mechanism can naturally arise in supergravity models where an axion-like field, whose potential is…
The curvaton and the inhomogeneous reheating scenarios for the generation of the cosmological curvature perturbation on large scales represent an alternative to the standard slow-roll scenario where the observed density perturbations are…
Hybrid inflation can be realised in low-energy effective string theory, as described using supergravity. We find that the coupling of moduli to F-term hybrid inflation in supergravity leads to a slope and a curvature for the inflaton…
We propose a new class of inflationary models in which the scalar field potential governing inflation is generated by the same non-perturbative gauge dynamics that may lead to supersymmetry breaking. Such models satisfy constraints from…
We study the supergravity hybrid inflation model of Ref.[1] in the presence of a modulus field. The eta-problem is solved by a shift symmetry for the inflaton, which protects the inflaton mass even in the presence of the modulus field.…
We consider a recent model with sub-millimeter sized extra dimensions, where the field that determines the size of the extra dimensions (the radion) also acts as an inflaton. The radion is also a stable modulus, and its coherent…
We study cosmological inflation within a recently proposed framework of perturbative moduli stabilisation in type IIB/F theory compactifications on Calabi-Yau threefolds. The stabilisation mechanism utilises three stacks of magnetised…
Cosmological $\alpha$-attractors stand out as particularly compelling models to describe inflation in the very early universe, naturally meeting tight observational bounds from cosmic microwave background (CMB) experiments. We investigate…
Inflation universally produces classical almost scale free Gaussian inhomogeneities of any light scalars. Assuming the coupling constants at the time of inflation depend on some light moduli fields, we encounter the generation of modulated…
We investigate the embedding of brane inflation into stable compactifications of string theory. At first sight a warped compactification geometry seems to produce a naturally flat inflaton potential, evading one well-known difficulty of…
We discuss the emergence of an inflationary phase in supergravity with the super-Higgs effect due to dynamical spontaneous breaking of supersymmetry, in which the role of the inflaton is played by the gravitino condensate. Realistic models…
In this PhD thesis, we investigate generic features of inflation which are strictly related to fundamental aspects of UV-physics scenarios, such as string theory or supergravity. After a short introduction to standard and inflationary…
Inflation may have been driven by a component which violated the Null-Energy Condition, thereby leading to {\it super inflation}. We provide the formalism to study cosmological perturbations when such a component is described by a scalar…
Predictions of inflationary schemes can be influenced by the presence of extra dimensions. This could be of particular relevance for the spectrum of gravitational waves in models where the extra dimensions provide a brane-world solution to…
We obtain cosmological constraints on models of inflation which exhibit rapid roll solutions. Rapid roll attractors exist for potentials with large mass terms and are thus of interest for inflationary model building within string theory. We…
Cosmological perturbations, originating in the quantum fluctuations of the fields that drive inflation, are observed to be nearly scale invariant at the largest scales. At smaller scales, however, perturbations are not severely constrained…
Using the techniques of out-of-equilibrium field theory, we study the influence on the properties of cosmological perturbations generated during inflation on observable scales coming from fluctuations corresponding today to scales much…