Related papers: Occurrence of exact $R^2$ inflation in non-local U…
Starobinsky's $R+\alpha R^2$ inflation provides a compelling one-parameter inflationary model that is supported by current cosmological observations. However, at the same order in spacetime derivatives as the $R^2$ term, an effective theory…
It is natural to expect a consistent inflationary model of the very early Universe to be an effective theory of quantum gravity, at least at energies much less than the Planck one. For the moment, $R+R^2$, or shortly $R^2$, inflation is the…
The emergence of $R^2$ (Starobinsky) inflation from the semi-classical modification of gravity due to matter quantum fields (trace anomaly) clearly points out the importance of fundamental physics and the first principles in the…
After an exhaustive introduction highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of the non-local models proposed so far as ultraviolet completions of the Starobinsky theory, we propose a new nonlocal completion of a general $f(R)$ theory (in the…
The $R+R^2$ model of gravity with the corresponding shallow potential in the Einstein frame is consistent with the observations. Recently, many efforts have been made to generalize the $R+R^2$ (Starobinsky) model of inflation or use other…
The $R^2$ inflation which is an extension of general relativity (GR) by quadratic scalar curvature introduces a quasi-de Sitter expansion of the early Universe governed by Ricci scalar being an eigenmode of d'Alembertian operator. In this…
Inflation in the early universe can generate the nearly conformal invariant fluctuation that leads to the structures we observe at the present. The simple viable Starobinsky $R^2$ inflation has an approximate global scale symmetry. We study…
In this chapter we review the recent developments of realizing $R^2$-like inflation in the framework of a most general UV nonlocal extension of Einstein's general theory of relativity (GR). It is a well-motivated robust approach towards…
Models of inflation are tightly constrained by the PLANCK satellite data. Among them, Starobinsky's model with an exponential type potential seems to be challenged by the recent BICEP2 results. The model is based on the existence of $\,~…
We investigate a (super-)renormalizable and ghost-free theory of gravity, showing that under a natural (exponential) ansatz of the form factor and a suitable truncation it can give rise to the Starobinsky inflationary theory in cosmological…
Analytic infinite derivative (AID) non-local quadratic curvature gravity in Weyl basis is known to be ghost free, superrenormalizable or finite and perturbatively Unitary and as such it is Ultra-Violet (UV) complete. Recently $R+R^2$…
The cosmological observations of cosmic microwave background and large-scale structure indicate that our universe has a nearly scaling invariant power spectrum of the primordial perturbation. However, the exact origin for this primordial…
As is well known, the gravitational degrees of freedom contained in $R+\zeta R^{2}$ (super)gravity lead to Starobinsky's potential, in a one-field setting for inflationary Cosmology that appears favored by Planck data. In this letter we…
After reviewing the motivations for cosmological inflation formulated in the formalism of supersymmetry, we argue that the appropriate framework is that of no-scale supergravity. We then show how to construct within this framework…
In this paper, we build upon the successes of the ultraviolet (UV) completion of the Starobinsky model of inflation. This involves an extension of the Einstein-Hilbert term by an infinite covariant derivative theory of gravity, which is…
In this paper we will study $R^2$-like inflation in a non-local modification of gravity which contains quadratic in Ricci scalar and Weyl tensor terms with analytic infinite derivative form-factors in the action. It is known that the…
Supergravity provides the natural supersymmetric framework for early universe cosmology. A broad class of inflationary models in no-scale supergravity yields tree-level predictions for cosmic microwave background (CMB) observables that…
The Starobinsky model was born in a cosmological scenario where conformally coupled matter quantum field fluctuations on the vacuum drive a non trivial semiclassical energy momentum tensor quadratic in curvature. The presence of an unstable…
One of the greatest problems of primordial inflation is that the inflationary space-time is past-incomplete. This is mainly because Einstein's GR suffers from a space-like Big Bang singularity. It has recently been shown that ghost-free,…
Starobinsky's $R^2$ inflation manifests a best-fit scenario for the power spectrum of primordial density fluctuations. Observables derived from the slow-roll picture of the $R^2$ model in the Einstein frame relies on the conformal…