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In any realistic particle physics model of inflation, the inflaton can be expected to couple to other fields. We consider a model with a dilaton-like coupling between a U(1) gauge field and a scalar inflaton. We show that this coupling can…
A recent proposal for gauge-invariant observables in inflation [R. Brunetti et al., JHEP 1608 (2016) 032] is examined. We give a generalisation of their construction to general background spacetimes. In flat space, we calculate one-loop…
We consider a Weyl invariant extension of Dirac-Born-Infeld type gravity. An appropriate choice of the metric hides the scalar degree of freedom which is required by the local scale invariance of the action at the first sight, and then a…
Cosmological local observables are at best statistically determined by the fundamental theory describing inflation. When the scalar inflaton is coupled uniformly to a collection of subdominant massless gauge vectors, rotational invariance…
It is shown that the squeezed limit of inflationary expectation values follows from reparametrization invariance of the wavefunction of the universe. This translates into a constraint on the longitudinal modes of functional derivatives of…
The two-point Wightman function of the free photon field defined in a gauge-invariant manner is known to be equivalent to the field-strength two-point function in any spacetime that is topologically trivial. We show that the gauge-invariant…
A scale-invariant universe can have a period of accelerated expansion at early times: inflation. We use a frame-invariant approach to calculate inflationary observables in a scale invariant theory of gravity involving two scalar fields -…
We show how observations of the perturbation spectra produced during inflation may be used to constrain the parameters of general scalar-tensor theories of gravity, which include both an inflaton and dilaton field. An interesting feature of…
We give a general expression for the Weyl tensor two-point function in a general Friedmann-Lema\^itre-Robertson-Walker spacetime. We work in reduced phase space for the perturbations, i.e., quantize only the dynamical degrees of freedom…
We revisit the old (fourth-order or quadratically generated) gravity model of Starobinsky in four space-time dimensions, and derive the (inflaton) scalar potential in the equivalent scalar-tensor gravity model via a Legendre-Weyl transform.…
A field kinetic coupling with the Einstein tensor leads to a gravitationally enhanced friction during inflation, by which even steep potentials with theoretically natural model parameters can drive cosmic acceleration. In the presence of…
Weyl (scale) invariant theories of scalars and gravity can generate all mass scales spontaneously. In this paper we study a particularly simple version -- scale invariant $R^2$ gravity -- and show that, during an inflationary period, it…
We consider the UV-protected inflation, where the inflaton potential is obtained by quantum (one-loop) breaking of a global symmetry into a discrete symmetry. In this model, all coupling scales are sub-Planckian. This is achieved by…
During single clock inflation, hidden fields (i.e. fields coupled to the inflaton only gravitationally) in their adiabatic vacua can ordinarily only affect observables through virtual effects. After renormalizing background quantities…
In the context of scalar-tensor theories of gravity we compute the third-order corrected spectral indices in the slow-roll approximation. The calculation is carried out by employing the Green's function method for scalar and tensor…
In recent publications we proposed one way to calculate gauge-invariant variables in the local observable universe, which is limited to a portion of the whole universe. To provide a theoretical prediction of the observable fluctuations, we…
We revisit the possibility of producing observable tensor modes through a continuous particle production process during inflation. Particularly, we focus on the multi-field realization of inflation where a spectator pseudo-scalar $\sigma$…
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 discuss the local (gauged) Weyl symmetry and its spontaneous breaking and apply it to model building beyond the Standard Model (SM) and inflation. In models with non-minimal couplings of the scalar fields to the Ricci scalar, that are…
We calculate the one-loop corrections from inflationary gravitons to the electromagnetic fields of a point charge and a point magnetic dipole on a locally de Sitter space background. Results are obtained both for an observer at rest in…