Related papers: Planck scale operators, inflation and fine tuning
We consider models of inflection point inflation. The main drawback of such models is that they suffer from the overshoot problem. Namely the initial condition should be fine tuned to be near the inflection point for the universe to…
We consider classically scale-invariant theories with non-minimally coupled scalar fields, where the Planck mass and the hierarchy of physical scales are dynamically generated. The classical theories possess a fixed point, where scale…
We revisit the inflationary dynamics in detail for theories with Gauss-Bonnet gravity coupled to scalar functions, in light of the Planck data. Considering the chaotic inflationary scenario, we constrain the parameters of two models…
We explore some issues in slow roll inflation in situations where field excursions are small compared to $M_p$. We argue that for small field inflation, minimizing fine tuning requires low energy supersymmetry and a tightly constrained…
The results from Planck2015, when combined with earlier observations from WMAP, ACT, SPT and other experiments, were the first observations to disfavor the "classic" inflationary paradigm. To satisfy the observational constraints,…
We consider an additional fine-tuning problem which afflicts scalar-driven models of inflation. The problem is that successful reheating requires the inflaton be coupled to ordinary matter, and quantum fluctuations of this matter induces…
Bayesian inference techniques are used to investigate situations where an additional light scalar field is present during inflation and reheating. This includes (but is not limited to) curvaton-type models. We design a numerical pipeline…
We study constant roll inflation systematically. This is a regime, in which the slow roll approximation can be violated. It has long been thought that this approximation is necessary for agreement with observations. However, recently it was…
We study single field slow-roll inflation in the presence of $F(R)$ gravity in the Palatini formulation. In contrast to metric $F(R)$, when rewritten in terms of an auxiliary field and moved to the Einstein frame, Palatini $F(R)$ does not…
We study the ultraviolet behaviour of Higgs inflation models above the apparent unitarity violation scale arising from the large non minimal coupling to gravity, by computing on-shell 4-point scattering amplitudes in the presence of a large…
The momentum UV cutoff in Quantum Field Theory is usually treated as an auxiliary device allowing to obtain finite amplitudes satisfying all physical requirements. It is even absent (not explicit) in the most popular approach - the…
Allowing for the possibility of large extra dimensions, the fundamental Planck scale $M$ could be anywhere in the range $\TeV\lsim M\lsim \mpl$, where $\mpl=2.4\times 10^{18}\GeV$ is the four-dimensional Planck scale. If $M\sim\TeV$,…
A recent paper argued that it is not possible to infer the energy scale of inflation from the amplitude of tensor fluctuations in the Cosmic Microwave Background, because the usual connection is substantially altered if there are a large…
Classically scale-invariant (and perturbative) theories provide a way to understand large hierarchies, as scales are generated through dimensional transmutation. They always lead to first-order phase transitions, since symmetries are…
We discuss models involving two scalar fields coupled to classical gravity that satisfy the general criteria: (i) the theory has no mass input parameters, (ii) classical scale symmetry is broken only through $-\frac{1}{12}\varsigma \phi^2…
We investigate asymptotic safety of a toy model of a singlet-scalar extension of the Higgs sector including two real scalar fields under the impact of quantum-gravity fluctuations. Employing functional renormalization group techniques, we…
We examine a scalar-tensor model of gravity that is globally scale-invariant. When adapted to a spatially flat Robertson-Walker metric, the equations of motion describe a dynamical system that flows from an unstable de Sitter space to a…
When the different wavelengths of the scalar and tensor modes of the geometry are all assigned on the same space-like hypersurface the maximally amplified frequencies of the spectrum remain smaller than the Planck mass only if the duration…
We study quantum corrections to an inflationary model, which has the attractive feature of being classically scale-invariant. In this model, quadratic gravity plays along a scalar field in such a way that inflation begins near the unstable…
We present uniform rate inflation in a modified $f(T, \mathcal{T}) $ gravity. It is found that early inflation can be realized even with a scalar field field with a quadratic potential and a negative cosmological constant. We construct…