Related papers: Cosmic variance in inflation with two light scalar…
Realistic models of high-energy physics include multiple scalar fields. Renormalization requires that the fields have nonminimal couplings to the spacetime Ricci curvature scalar, and the couplings can be large at the energy scales of…
We consider light scalar fields during inflation and show how the stochastic spectral expansion method can be used to calculate two-point correlation functions of an arbitrary local function of the field in de Sitter space. In particular,…
Recently, BICEP2 measurements of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) $B$-mode polarization has indicated the presence of primordial gravitational waves at degree angular scales, inferring the tensor-to-scalar ratio of $r=0.2$ and a…
We examine the spectrum of inflaton fluctuations resulting from any given long period of exponential inflation. Infrared and ultraviolet divergences in the inflaton dispersion summed over all modes do not appear in our approach. We show how…
The symmetron is a scalar field associated with the dark sector whose coupling to matter depends on the ambient matter density. The symmetron is decoupled and screened in regions of high density, thereby satisfying local constraints from…
We consider cosmological perturbations caused by modulated inflaton velocity. During inflation, the inflaton motion is damped and the velocity is determined by the parameters such as couplings or masses that may depend on light…
We examine cosmological perturbations in a dynamical theory of inflation in which an Abelian gauge field couples directly to the inflaton, breaking conformal invariance. When the coupling between the gauge field and the inflaton takes a…
Chain Inflation is an alternative to slow roll inflation in which the universe undergoes a series of transitions between different vacua. The density perturbations (studied in this paper) are seeded by the probabilistic nature of tunneling…
We analyze the signatures of inflationary models that are coupled to strongly interacting field theories, a basic class of multifield models also motivated by their role in providing dynamically small scales. Near the squeezed limit of the…
We compute the spectrum of scalar and tensor metric perturbations generated, as amplified vacuum fluctuations, during an epoch of dilaton-driven inflation of the type occurring naturally in string cosmology. In the tensor case the…
We discuss metric perturbations produced during a period of inflation in the early universe where two scalar fields evolve. The final scalar perturbation spectrum can be calculated in terms of the perturbed expansion along neighbouring…
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…
Inflationary models predict a correlation between primordial density perturbations (scalar metric perturbations) and gravitational waves (tensor metric perturbations) in the form of a scalar-scalar-tensor three-point correlation, or…
We show that the recent Planck limits on primordial non-Gaussianity impose strong constraints on light hidden sector fields coupled to the inflaton via operators suppressed by a high mass scale \Lambda. We study a simple effective field…
Several recent proposals to embed inflation into high-energy physics rely on inflationary dynamics characterized by a strongly non-geodesic motion in negatively curved field space. This naturally leads to a transient instability of…
Models of inflationary cosmology based on spontaneous symmetry breaking typically suffer from the shortcoming that the symmetry breaking scale is driven to nearly the Planck scale by observational constraints. In this paper we investigate…
We study a model of inflation where the scalar perturbations are almost gaussian while there is sizable (equilateral) nongaussianity in the tensor sector. In this model, a rolling pseudoscalar gravitationally coupled to the inflaton…
We present the power spectra of the scalar- and tensor-type structures generated in an inflation model based on the nonminimally coupled scalar field with a self coupling. By comparing the contributions of these structures to the anisotropy…
Does the observable spectrum of cosmic fluctuations depend on detailed initial conditions? This addresses the question if the general inflationary paradigm is sufficient to predict within a given model the spectrum and amplitude of cosmic…
Recently multi-field inflation models that can produce large scalar fluctuations on small scales have drawn a lot of attention, primarily because they could lead to primordial black hole production and generation of large second-order…