Related papers: Coherent Inflation for Large Quantum Superposition…
The inflationary paradigm provides a mechanism to generate the primordial perturbations needed to explain the observed large scale structures in the universe. Inflation traces back all the inhomogeneities to quantum fluctuations although…
This thesis is dedicated to studying cosmological inflation, which is a period of accelerated expansion in the very early Universe that is required to explain the observed anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background. Inflation, when…
The decoherence of quantum fluctuations into classical perturbations during inflation is discussed. A simple quantum mechanical argument, using a spatial particle wavefunction rather than a field description, shows that observable…
One of the most important issues in an inflationary theory as standard or quintessential inflation is the mechanism to reheat the universe after the end of the inflationary period in order to match with the Hot Big Bang universe. In…
We study an inflationary scenario where thermal inflation is followed by fast-roll inflation. This is a rather generic possibility based on the effective potentials of spontaneous symmetry breaking in the context of particle physics models.…
The non-supersymmetric and supersymmetric versions of hybrid inflation are summarized. It is emphasized that supersymmetric hybrid inflation (with its extensions) is an extremely "natural" inflationary scenario since it does not require…
In effective supergravity theories following from the superstring, a modulus field can quite naturally set the neccessary initial conditions for successful cosmological inflation to be driven by a hidden sector scalar field. The leading…
It is well known that large Hubble-induced supergravity corrections to the inflaton field can ruin the flatness of the potential, thus creating a tension between slow-roll inflation and supergravity. In this paper we show that it is…
The curvaton and the inhomogeneous reheating scenarios for the generation of the cosmological curvature perturbation on large scales represent an alternative to the standard slow-roll scenario where the observed density perturbations are…
A dissipative mechanism is presented, which emerges in generic interacting quantum field systems and which leads to robust warm inflation. An explicit example is considered, where using typical parameter values, it is shown that…
We show that next generation Cosmic Microwave Background experiments will be capable of the first ever measurement of the inflaton coupling to other particles, opening a new window to probe the connection between cosmic inflation and…
The aim of this paper is to highlight the challenges and potential gains surrounding a coherent description of physics from the high-energy scales of inflation down to the lower energy scales probed in particle-physics experiments. As an…
Quantum phase transitions, transitions between many-body ground states, are of extensive interest in research ranging from condensed matter physics to cosmology. Key features of the phase transitions include a stage with rapidly growing new…
We present the detailed analyses of five-dimensional loop quantum Kaluza-Klein cosmology based on the symmetric reduction of the connection formulation of the full theory. The previous results in a particular scenario are extended to more…
We construct a model of hybrid inflation within a controlled five-dimensional effective field theory framework. The inflaton and waterfall fields are realized as naturally light moduli of the 5D compactification. At the quantum level,…
We investigate a realistic non-supersymmetric hybrid inflation model incorporating right-handed neutrinos and assess its viability in light of recent cosmological observations. At tree level, the inflaton potential yields a blue-tilted…
We analyze the requirements to test some of the most paradigmatic collapse models with a protocol that prepares quantum superpositions of massive objects. This consists of coherently expanding the wave function of a ground-state-cooled…
We review the main aspects of the warm inflation scenario, focusing on the inflationary dynamics and the predictions related to the primordial spectrum of perturbations, to be compared with the recent cosmological observations. We study in…
Quantum gravitational back-reaction offers the potential of simultaneously resolving the problem of the cosmological constant and providing a natural model of inflation in which scalars play no special role. In this model inflation begins…
Power spectra always play an important role in the theory of inflation. In particular, the ability to reproduce the galaxy matter power spectrum and the CMB temperature angular power spectrum coefficients to high accuracy is often…