Related papers: Oscillating Chiral Tensor Spectrum from Axionic In…
Supersolid inflation is a class of inflationary theories that simultaneously breaks time and space reparameterization invariance during inflation, with distinctive features for the dynamics of cosmological fluctuations. We investigate…
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…
Wrapped branes in string compactifications introduce a monodromy that extends the field range of individual closed-string axions to beyond the Planck scale. Furthermore, approximate shift symmetries of the system naturally control…
We study single-field inflationary models with steep step-like features in the potential that lead to the temporary violation of the slow-roll conditions during the evolution of the inflaton. These features enhance the power spectrum of the…
The prospects for direct measurements of inflationary gravitational waves by next generation interferometric detectors inferred from the possible detection of B-mode polarization of the cosmic microwave background are studied. We compute…
Gauge-flation, non-Abelian gauge field inflation, which was introduced in arXiv:1102.1513 and analyzed more thoroughly in arXiv:1102.1932, is a model of inflation driven by non-Abelian gauge fields minimally coupled to Einstein gravity. In…
It is quite well known for some time that string inspired axionic terms of the form $\nu (\phi)\tilde{R}R$, known also as Chern-Simons terms, do not affect the scalar perturbations and the background evolution for a flat…
We study general class of small-field axion inflations which are the mixture of polynomial and sinusoidal functions suggested by the natural and axion monodromy inflations. The axion decay constants leading to the successful axion…
Chromo-natural inflation (CNI) is an inflationary model where an axion coupled with SU$(2)$ gauge fields acts as the inflaton. In CNI, the gauge fields have nonzero vacuum expectation values (VEVs), which results in the enhancement of…
The continuous shift symmetry of axions is at the heart of several realizations of inflationary models. In particular, axion monodromy inflation aims at achieving super-Planckian field ranges for the inflaton in the context of string…
We calculate the tensor bispectrum mediated by an excited scalar field during inflation and find that the bispectrum peaks in the squeezed configuration, which is different from that of gravitational waves induced by enhanced curvature…
In this work we determine the power spectrum of the gravitational potential of the primordial fluctuations for an inflationary model whose \emph{inflaton} is a non-canonical scalar field of the tachyon-type. The respective background field…
We construct a hybrid-inflation model where the inflaton potential is generated radiatively, as gauge symmetries guarantee it to be accidentally flat at tree level. The model can be regarded as a small-field version of Natural Inflation,…
We study a variant of the Chromo-Natural Inflation (CNI) mechanism in which the inflaton interacts only gravitationally with the CNI fields. Integrating out all the non-dynamical scalar fields of the model results in a coupling between the…
Sourced gravitational waves in chromonatural inflation (CNI) can give rise to a chiral spectrum of tensor fluctuations that is considerably enhanced relative to the vacuum fluctuations. If the field content of CNI acts purely as a spectator…
Models of inflation based on axions, which owe their popularity to the robustness against UV corrections, have also a very distinct class of signatures. The relevant interactions of the axion are a non-perturbative oscillating contribution…
Models of inflation involving non-Abelian gauge field backgrounds can produce gravitational waves at an observable level with a preferred handedness. This asymmetry comes about because the non-Abelian background generates parity-violation…
We consider the stochastic gravitational wave background induced by arbitrary source fields that are amplified during cosmological inflation. The associated tensor spectral index is shown to be given, under minimal assumptions, by a simple…
BICEP2 has observed a primordial gravitational wave corresponding to the tensor-to-scalar ratio of 0.16. It seems to require a super-Planckian inflationary model. In this paper, we propose a double hybrid inflation model, where the inflaton…
If the recent measurement of B-mode polarization by BICEP2 is due to primordial gravitational waves, it implies that inflation was driven by energy densities at the GUT scale $M_{GUT} \sim 2\times 10^{16} GeV$. This favors single-field…