Related papers: Sound Speed of Primordial Fluctuations in Supergra…
We investigate a novel single field inflationary scenario which allows a transition between a slow-roll k-inflation with $c_{\rm s}$ of order unity and a ghost inflation with $ c_{\rm s} \simeq 0$, where $ c_{\rm s}$ is the sound speed for…
Observations of the cosmic microwave background do not yet determine whether inflation was driven by a slowly-rolling scalar field or involved another physical mechanism. In this paper we discuss the prospects of using the power spectra of…
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…
This paper explores single field inflation models with a constant, but arbitrary speed of sound c_s, obtained by deforming the kinetic energy terms to a Dirac-Born-Infeld form. Allowing c_s<1 provides a simple parameterization of…
The bispectrum of single-field inflationary trajectories in which the speed of sound of the inflationary trajectories $c_s$ is constant but not equal to the speed of light $c=1$ is explored. The trajectories are generated as random…
We describe models of single-field inflation with small and sharp step features in the potential (and sound speed) of the inflaton field, in the context of the Effective Field Theory of Inflation. This approach allows us to study the…
We make a comprehensive investigation of the observational effect of the inflation consistency relation. We focus on the general single-field inflation model with the consistency relation $r=-8c_s n_t$, and investigate the observational…
Heavy scalar fields can undergo an instability during inflation as a result of their kinetic couplings with the inflaton. This is known as the geometrical destabilization of inflation, as it relies on the effect of the negative curvature of…
With an energy scale that can be as high as $10^{14}\,{\rm GeV}$, inflation may provide a unique probe of high-energy physics. Both scalar and tensor fluctuations generated during this early accelerated expansion contain crucial information…
We show that a single uncharged chiral superfield, canonically coupled to \mbox{$N=1$} supergravity with vanishing superpotential, naturally drives inflation in the early universe for a class of simple Kahler potentials. Inflation occurs…
We propose a new single field inflation model in which the usual slow-roll inflation is joined to a new period of slow-climb and slow-roll inflation through a short intermediate non-inflationary phase. We then show that primordial curvature…
We study the evolution of quantum fluctuations of gravity around an inflationary solution in renormalizable quantum gravity, in which the initial scalar-fluctuation dominance is shown by the background-free nature expressed by a special…
We perform a thorough computation of the one-loop corrections from both scalar and tensor degrees of freedom to the power spectrum of curvature fluctuations for non-canonical Lagrangians in single-field inflation. We consider models…
In order to produce appreciable amount of primordial black holes (PBHs), the square amplitude of curvature perturbation must take a large value of $\mathcal{O}(0.01)$, namely, seven digits larger than the value observed by cosmic microwave…
We study a multi-field inflationary theory with separable Lagrangian, which has different speed of sound for each field. We find that the fields always coupled at perturbative level through gravitational interaction. We show that if the…
Inflationary perturbations in multi-field theories can exhibit a transient tachyonic instability as a consequence of their non-trivial motion in the internal field space. When an effective single-field description is applicable, the…
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…
For a single scalar field with unit sound speed minimally coupled to Einstein gravity, there are exactly three distinct cosmological solutions which produce a scale invariant spectrum of curvature perturbations in a dynamical attractor…
We calculate the three-point function for primordial scalar fluctuations in a single field inflationary scenario where the scalar field Lagrangian is a completely general function of the field and its first derivative. We obtain an explicit…
The effect of spatial curvature on primordial perturbations is controlled by $ \Omega_{K,0}/c_{s}^{2} $, where $ \Omega_{K,0} $ is today's fractional density of spatial curvature and $ c_{s} $ is the speed of sound during inflation. Here we…