Related papers: Differentiating G-inflation from String Gas Cosmol…
Thermal inflation was proposed as a mechanism to dilute the density of cosmological moduli. Thermal inflation is driven by a complex scalar field possessing a large vacuum expectation value and a very flat potential, called a `flaton'. Such…
By demanding the validity of an effective field theory description during inflation, in this note we derive some peculiar inequalities among the three interesting stringy and cosmological parameters, namely the tensor-to-scalar ratio ($r$),…
We generalize the Effective Field Theory of Inflation to include additional light scalar degrees of freedom that are in their vacuum at the time the modes of interest are crossing the horizon. In order to make the scalars light in a natural…
Power spectra play an important role in the theory of inflation, and their ability to reproduce current observational data to high accuracy is often considered a triumph of inflation, largely because of a lack of credible alternatives. In…
Inflationary cosmology provides a natural mechanism for the generation of primordial perturbations which seed the formation of observed cosmic structure and lead to specific signals of anisotropy in the cosmic microwave background…
We present a series of theoretical constraints on the potentially viable inflation models that might yield a blue spectrum for primordial tensor perturbations. By performing a detailed dynamical analysis we show that, while there exists…
We examine the role of using symmetry and effective field theory in inflationary model building. We describe the standard formulation of starting with an approximate shift symmetry for a scalar field, and then introducing corrections…
Chromo-Natural Inflation is the first worked example of a model of inflation in which slow-roll inflation is achieved by "magnetic drift" as opposed to Hubble friction. In this work, we give an account of the perturbations at linear order…
Recently, it has been realized that the so-called G-inflation model inspired by supplementing a generalized covariant Galileon-like non-linear derivative self-interacting term to the standard kinetic term should be ruled out from…
I construct a class of single small field models of inflation that can predict an observable gravitational wave signal in the cosmic microwave background anisotropoies, contrary to popular wisdom. The spectral index, its running, the tensor…
In the hope of avoiding model dependence of the cosmological observables, phenomenological parametrizations of Cosmic Inflation have recently been proposed. Typically, they are expressed in terms of two parameters associated with an…
We present the model-independent studies of non attractor inflation in the context of effective field theory (EFT) of inflation. Within the EFT approach two independent branches of non-attractor inflation solutions are discovered in which a…
A primordial gravitational wave background with positive(blue) spectral index is expected in several non-standard inflationary cosmologies where the stress-energy tensor violates the null energy condition. Here we show that a sizable amount…
We develop a string-motivated dynamical Gauss--Bonnet completion of Starobinsky inflation. Since a constant Gauss--Bonnet term is topological in four dimensions, observable effects must arise from a modulus, dilaton, or compactification…
Cosmological inflation is not the only early universe scenario consistent with current observational data. I will discuss the criteria for a successful early universe cosmology, compare a couple of the proposed scenarios (inflation,…
The methods of effective field theory are used to study generic theories of inflation with a single inflaton field and to perform a general analysis of the associated non-Gaussianities. We investigate the amplitudes and shapes of the…
Braneworld inflation is a phenomenology related to string theory that describes high-energy modifications to general relativistic inflation. The observable universe is a braneworld embedded in 5-dimensional anti de Sitter spacetime. Whe the…
We study a model of inflation where the scalar perturbations are almost gaussian while there is sizable (equilateral) nongaussianity in the tensor sector. In this model, a rolling pseudoscalar gravitationally coupled to the inflaton…
The recent measurements of cosmological parameters by the Planck collaboration favors inflationary models with a redshifted spectrum and a very low tensor-to-scalar ratio. Two well-studied scenarios in the particle physics/string theory…
We apply the Effective Field Theory of Inflation to study the case where the continuous shift symmetry of the Goldstone boson \pi is softly broken to a discrete subgroup. This case includes and generalizes recently proposed String Theory…