Related papers: V-mode Polarization in Axion Inflation and Preheat…
We study aspects of inflation and the possibility of enhanced production of primordial black holes (PBHs) and gravitational waves (GWs) in a string-inspired model of two axion fields coupled to Chern-Simons gravity, which results in a…
We investigate density perturbations generated through modulated reheating while inflation is driven by a conformally coupled scalar field. A large running of the spectral index is obtained, which reflects the basic nature of conformal…
We calculate particle production during inflation and in the early stages of reheating after inflation in models with a charged scalar field coupled to Abelian and non-Abelian gauge fields. A detailed analysis of the power spectra of…
It was previously shown how several explanatory deficiencies of the Standard Model (including the origin of dark matter, matter-antimatter asymmetry, small active neutrino mass, strong CP-conservation and the seeds for large-scale structure…
We study an axion inflation model recently proposed within the framework of type IIB superstring theory, where we pay a particular attention to a sub-Planckian axion decay constant. Our axion potential can lead to the small field inflation…
We revisit the model of axion inflation in the context of stochastic inflation and investigate the effects of the stochastic noises associated to the electromagnetic fields. Because of the parity violating interaction, one polarization of…
We study (p)reheating in modular (closed string) inflationary scenarios, with a special emphasis on Kahler moduli/Roulette models. It is usually assumed that reheating in such models occurs through perturbative decays. However, we find that…
Primordial gravitational waves generated during inflation lead to the B-mode polarization in the cosmic microwave background and a stochastic gravitational wave background in the Universe. We will explore the current constraint on the tilt…
String scenarios generically predict that we live in a so called axiverse: the Universe with about a hundred of light axion species which are decoupled from the Standard Model particles. However, the axions can couple to the inflaton which…
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 investigate the possibility that primordial black holes (PBHs) can be formed from large curvature perturbations generated during the waterfall phase transition in a hybrid inflation model driven by an axion-like particle (ALP) $\phi$.…
The motion of a pseudo-scalar field $X$ during inflation naturally induces a significant amplification of the gauge fields to which it is coupled. The amplified gauge fields can source characteristic scalar and tensor primordial…
A model of high scale inflation is presented where the radial part of the Peccei-Quinn (PQ) field with a non-minimal coupling to gravity plays the role of the inflaton, and the QCD axion is the dark matter. A quantum fluctuation of…
Production of gravitationally coupled light moduli fields must be suppressed in the early universe, so that its decay products do not alter Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN) predictions for light elements. On the other hand, the moduli quanta…
An attractive candidate for the inflaton is an axion slowly rolling down a flat potential protected by a perturbative shift symmetry. Realisations of this idea within large field, natural and monomial inflation have been disfavoured by…
Inspired by the chromo-natural inflation model of Adshead&Wyman, we reshape its scalar content to relax the tension with current observational bounds. Besides an inflaton, the setup includes a spectator sector in which an axion and SU(2)…
We study the statistics of the primordial power spectrum in models where massless gauge vectors are coupled to the inflaton, paying special attention to observational implications of having fundamental or effective horizons embedded in a…
We study derivatively coupled fermions in axion-driven inflation, specifically $m_\phi^2\phi^2$ and monodromy inflation, and calculate particle production during the inflationary epoch and the post-inflationary axion oscillations. During…
We study gravitational wave production during Abelian gauge-field preheating following inflation. We consider both scalar and pseudoscalar inflaton models coupled directly to Abelian gauge fields via either a dilatonic coupling to the…
Models of inflation based on axions, which owe their popularity to the robustness against UV corrections, have also a very distinct class of signatures. The relevant interactions of the axion are a non-perturbative oscillating contribution…