Related papers: Tensor Squeezed Limits and the Higuchi Bound
We show that the anisotropies in the spectrum of gravitational waves induced by scalar modes after the end of inflation in canonical, single-field models are completely determined by the tilt of the scalar and tensor power spectra. The…
We investigate the possibility of inflation with models of antisymmetric tensor field having minimal and nonminimal couplings to gravity. Although the minimal model does not support inflation, the nonminimal models, through the introduction…
If observations confirm BICEP2's claim of a tensor-scalar ratio $r\approx 0.2$ on CMB scales, then the inflationary consistency relation $n_{t}=-r/8$ predicts a small negative value for the tensor spectral index $n_t$. We show that future…
We derive evolution and constraint equations for second order perturbations of flat dust homogeneous and isotropic solutions to the Einstein field equations using all scalar, vector and tensor perturbation modes. We show that the…
Cosmological soft theorems (or consistency relations) provide a powerful probe for the physics of inflation. These relations rely on minimal assumptions and hold very generally. Consequently, any violation of these relations would rule out…
The squeezed limit of the primordial curvature bispectrum is an extremely sensitive probe of new physics and encodes information about additional fields active during inflation such as their masses and spins. In the conventional setup,…
It is commonly assumed that the stochastic background of gravitational waves on cosmological scales follows an almost scale-independent power spectrum, as generically predicted by the inflationary paradigm. However, it is not inconceivable…
Besides expanding anisotropically, the universe can also be anisotropic at the level of its (spatial) curvature. In particular, models with anisotropic curvature and isotropic expansion leads both to a $\Lambda$CDM-like phenomenology and to…
We investigate the dominant physical effects of superhorizon fluctuations in a flat FLRW universe, focusing on whether the combined evolution of scalar and tensor adiabatic modes in the near-horizon regime could lead to geometries beyond…
We study the realization of cosmic inflation in bigravity theories. By analyzing the evolution of scalar, vector, and tensor perturbations in de Sitter-like spacetimes, we find strong stability constraints on the class of viable vacua…
Anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB) originates from both tensor and scalar perturbations. To study the characteristics of each of these two kinds of perturbations, one has to determine the contribution of each to…
We argue that the non-detection of primordial tensor modes has taught us a great deal about the primordial universe. In single-field slow-roll inflation, the current upper bound on the tensor-to-scalar ratio, $r < 0.07$ $(95 \% ~CL)$,…
We compute the phenomenological signatures of a model (Watanabe et al' 09) of anisotropic inflation driven by a scalar and a vector field. The action for the vector is U(1) invariant, and the model is free of ghost instabilities. A suitable…
We study the tensor consistency relation in models of axion inflation with an SU(2) gauge field. In the tensor sector, we have two spin-2 modes, the standard gravity waves and the tensor perturbations of the SU(2) gauge field which sources…
We systematically show that in potential driven generalized G-inflation models, quantum corrections coming from new physics at the strong coupling scale can be avoided, while producing observable tensor modes. The effective action can be…
We study the inflationary consequences of Degenerate Higher Order Scalar Tensor (DHOST) theories in a de Sitter background. We perturb the de Sitter background by operators breaking either the degeneracy condition, i.e scordatura DHOST, or…
We report on a new class of fast-roll inflationary models. In a huge part of its parameter space, inflationary perturbations exhibit quite unusual phenomena such as scalar and tensor modes freezing out at widely different times, as well as…
As is well known, the non-Gaussianity parameter $f_{_{\rm NL}}$, which is often used to characterize the amplitude of the scalar bi-spectrum, can be expressed completely in terms of the scalar spectral index $n_{\rm s}$ in the squeezed…
We compute the leading order connected four-point function of the primordial curvature perturbation coming from the four-point function of the fields in multi-field DBI inflation models. We confirm that the consistency relations in the…
It is well-known that the primordial scalar curvature and tensor perturbations, $\zeta$ and $\gamma_{ij}$, are conserved on super-horizon scales in minimal inflation models. However, their wave functional has a rapidly oscillating phase…