Related papers: Cosmological Perturbations without Inflation
We show that there are inflationary models for which perturbations in the energy momentum tensor, which are of second order in the scalar field, cannot be neglected. We first specify the conditions under which the usual first order…
Cosmological $\alpha$-attractors stand out as particularly compelling models to describe inflation in the very early universe, naturally meeting tight observational bounds from cosmic microwave background (CMB) experiments. We investigate…
The Higgs field is an attractive candidate for the inflaton because it is an observationally confirmed fundamental scalar field. Importantly, it can be modeled by the most general renormalizable scalar potential. However, if the classical…
Inflation provides a unified paradigm for understanding the isotropy of the cosmic microwave background (CMB), the flatness problem, and the origin of large-scale structure. Although the physics responsible for inflation is not yet well…
The observational constraints on the primordial power spectrum have tightened considerably with the release of the first year analysis of the WMAP observations, especially when combined with the results from other CMB experiments and galaxy…
We calculate the power spectrum of vacuum fluctuations of a generic scalar field in a quantum cosmological setting that is manifestly singularity-free. The power spectrum is given in terms of the usual scale invariant spectrum plus scale…
BICEP2 measurement of primordial tensor modes in CMB suggests that cosmological inflation is due to a slowly rolling inflaton taking trans-Planckian values and provides further experimental evidence for the absence of large $M_{\rm P}$…
We consider a cosmological model in which the tensor mode becomes massive during inflation, and study the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) temperature and polarization bispectra arising from the mixing between the scalar mode and the…
We study quantum fluctuations of a free massless scalar field during inflation in the presence of a point, line, or plane defect such as a black hole, cosmic string, or domain wall, using a perturbative expansion in powers of small defect…
We study a generality of an inflationary scenario by integrating the Einstein equations numerically in a plane-symmetric spacetime. We consider the inhomogeneous spacetimes due to (i) localized gravitational waves with a positive…
We consider inflation in a universe with a positive cosmological constant and a nonminimally coupled scalar field, in which the field couples both quadratically and quartically to the Ricci scalar. When considered in the Einstein frame and…
A stiff matter-dominated universe modeled by a free massless scalar field minimally coupled to gravity in a Friedmann-Lema\^{\i}tre-Robertson-Walker (FLRW) geometry is quantized. Generalized complex-width gaussian superpositions of the…
We propose a novel scenario in which scalar perturbations, that seed the large scale structure of the Universe, are generated without relying on a scalar field (the inflaton). In this framework, inflation is driven by a de Sitter space-time…
Bouncing models of cosmology, as they arise e.g. in loop quantum cosmology, can be followed by an inflationary phase and generate close-to-scale-invariant fluctuation spectra as observed in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). However,…
I show that cosmological perturbation spectra produced from quantum fluctuations in massless or self-interacting scalar fields during an inflationary era remain invariant under a two parameter family of transformations of the homogeneous…
We construct a model of inflation based on a low-energy effective theory of spontaneously broken global scale invariance. This provides a shift symmetry that protects the inflaton potential from quantum corrections. Since the underlying…
We propose a scenario of the beginning of inflation in which the non-vacuum value of the scalar field that drives inflation develops dynamically due to the non-minimal coupling to gravity. In this scenario, inflation emerges as an…
We show that a contracting universe which bounces due to quantum cosmological effects and connects to the hot big-bang expansion phase, can produce an almost scale invariant spectrum of perturbations provided the perturbations are produced…
The standard model of cosmology assumes a homogeneous and isotropic universe that undergoes a period of exponential expansion very early on, named inflation. This stretches quantum fluctuations from the onset of inflation to cosmological…
In scale-invariant models of fundamental physics all mass scales are generated via spontaneous symmetry breaking. In this work, we study inflation in scale-invariant quadratic gravity, in which the Planck mass is generated classically by a…