Related papers: Large Field Inflation and Gravitational Entropy
Within supersymmetry we provide an example where the inflaton sector is derived from a gauge invariant polynomial of SU(N) or SO(N) gauge theory. Inflation in our model is driven by multi-flat directions, which assist accelerated expansion.…
Cosmological inflation gives a natural answer for a variety of cosmological questions, including the horizon problem, the flatness problem, and others. However, inflation yields new questions relating to the flatness of the inflaton…
During inflation, there is a preferred reference frame in which the expansion of the background spacetime is spatially isotropic. In contrast to Minkowski spacetime, observables can depend on the velocity of the system with respect to this…
We consider inflation driven near a saddle point in a higher dimensional field space, which is the most likely type of slow roll inflation on the string theoretical landscape; anthropic arguments need to be invoked in order to find a…
We derive an extended version of the well-known Lyth Bound on the total variation of the inflaton field, incorporating higher order corrections in slow roll. We connect the field variation $\Delta\phi$ to both the spectral index of scalar…
Multi-field inflation with a curved scalar geometry has been found to support background trajectories that violate the slow-roll, slow-turn conditions and thus have the potential to evade the swampland constraints. In order to understand…
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…
We characterize graviton non-Gaussianities in models of inflation where de Sitter boosts are spontaneously broken. We discuss which of the symmetry breaking patterns studied in Nicolis et al., 2015 can sustain a period of quasi de Sitter…
We determine the frequency of regions of small-field inflation in the Wigner landscape as an approximation to random supergravities/type IIB flux compactifications. We show that small-field inflation occurs exponentially more often than…
Positivity bounds represent nontrivial limitations on effective field theories (EFTs) if those EFTs are to be completed into a Lorentz-invariant, causal, local, and unitary framework. While such positivity bounds have been applied in a wide…
In this article, we study in detail the linear dynamics and cubic interactions for any number $N_\mathrm{field}$ of scalar fields during inflation, directly in terms of the observable curvature perturbation $\zeta$ and $N_\mathrm{field}-1$…
The (large-scale) structures we observe in the Universe are classical, but within the inflationary scenario they do originate from quantum fluctuations. This leads to the question: ''How did this quantum-to-classical transition occur?''. A…
It is challenging to construct explicit and controllable models that realize de Sitter solutions in string compactifications. This difficulty is the main motivation for the Refined de Sitter Conjecture and the Trans-Planckian Censorship…
We analyze the interplay between K\"ahler moduli stabilization and chaotic inflation in supergravity. While heavy moduli decouple from inflation in the supersymmetric limit, supersymmetry breaking generically introduces non-decoupling…
We study pseudoscalar inflation in the Einstein-Cartan-Palatini (first-order) formulation of gravity while allowing for torsion. We introduce two non-minimal interactions in the gravitational sector: pseudoscalar couplings to the Pontryagin…
We investigate infrared dynamics of four-dimensional Einstein gravity in de Sitter space. We set up a general framework to investigate dynamical scaling relations in quantum/classical gravitational theories. The conformal mode dependence of…
String theory models of axion monodromy inflation exhibit scalar potentials which are quadratic for small values of the inflaton field and evolve to a more complicated function for large field values. Oftentimes the large field behaviour is…
We discuss under which conditions multi-field cold and warm inflationary models with canonical kinetic energy terms are compatible with the swampland conjectures about the emergence of de Sitter solutions in string theory. We find that…
The large tensor spectrum recently observed by the BICEP2 Collaboration requires a super-Planckian field variation of the inflaton in the single-field inflationary scenario. The required slow-roll parameter \epsilon \approx 0.01 would…
Precise cosmological data from WMAP and forthcoming CMB experiments motivate the study of the quantum corrections to the slowroll inflationary parameters.We find the quantum (loop) corrections to the equations of motion of the classical…