Related papers: Darkflation -- one scalar to rule them all?
The quantisation of scalar field theory and Einstein gravity is investigated using a fully covariant background field formalism, including Vilkovisky-DeWitt corrections. The one-loop divergences, which are relevant for the consistency of…
The inflaton field responsible for inflation may not be a canonical fundamental scalar. It is possible that the inflaton is a composite of fermions or it may have a decay width. In these cases the standard procedure for calculating the…
Despite the fact that experimentally with a high degree of statistical significance only a single Standard Model--like Higgs boson is discovered at the LHC, extended Higgs sectors with multiple scalar fields not excluded by combined fits of…
We derive the first quantum gravitational corrections to the inflationary power spectra for a general single-field scalar-tensor theory which includes a non-minimal coupling to gravity, a non-standard scalar kinetic term and an arbitrary…
In these lectures I review the standard hot big-bang cosmology, emphasizing its successes, its shortcomings, and its major challenges-developing a detailed understanding of the formation of structure in the Universe and identifying the…
The formation of structure in the Universe offers some of the most powerful evidence in favour of the existence of dark matter in the Universe. We summarize recent work by ourselves and our collaborators, using linear and quasi-linear…
We go a step further in the search for a consistent and realistic supergravity model of large-field inflation by building a class of models with the following features: during slow-roll, all the scalar fields other than the inflaton are…
Motivated by their potential role as dark matter, we study the cosmological evolution of light scalar and vector fields non-minimally coupled to gravity. Our focus is on a situation where the dominant contribution to the energy density…
We study models of inflation where the inflaton corresponds to a flat direction in field space and its mass term is generated by gravity mediated soft supersymmetry breaking at high scale. Assuming the inflaton to have non negligible…
The hypothesis of low entropy in the initial state of the universe usually explains the observed entropy increase is in only one time direction: the thermodynamic arrow of time. The Hamiltonian formalism is commonly used in the context of…
Until recently our knowledge of the primordial curvature perturbation was relatively modest. Ever since COBE delivered its map of data we know the scalar spectrum of primordial perturbations is approximately flat, with the power being only…
We consider a class of exponential models of $f(R)$ gravity, in the presence of a canonical scalar field, for which at early times the effective Lagrangian of the theory becomes that of a rescaled canonical scalar field with the…
We consider a simple extension of the Standard Model Higgs inflation with one new real scalar field which preserves unitarity up to the Planck scale. The new scalar field (called sigma) completes in the ultraviolet the theory of Higgs…
We propose a new class of gravity-matter models defined in terms of two independent non-Riemannian volume forms (alternative generally covariant integration measure densities) on the spacetime manifold. For the matter we choose appropriate…
We study inflationary scenarios driven by a scalar field in the presence of a non-minimal coupling between matter and curvature. We show that the Friedmann equation can be significantly modified when the energy density during inflation…
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…
Recently, attempts have been made to understand the apparent near coincidence of the present dark energy and matter energy in terms of a dynamical attractor-like solution for the evolution of a scalar field. In these models the field…
The inflation model with non-minimal coupling scalar field in the context of the hybrid metric Palatini is studied in this paper. We derive the Einstein's field equations, the equations of motion of the scalar field. Furthermore,the…
The flat directions LLe and udd within the minimal supersymmetric Standard Model provide all the necessary ingredients for a successful inflation with the right amplitude of the scalar density perturbations, negligible gravity waves and the…
We study a class of early universe cosmological models based on Einstein-Cartan gravity and including a higher derivative term corresponding to a power of the Holst scalar curvature. The resulting effective action is basically given by…