Related papers: Constrained superfields from inflation to reheatin…

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…

We elaborate on a minimal inflation scenario based entirely on the general properties of supersymmetry breaking in supergravity models. We identify the inflaton as the scalar component of the Goldstino superfield. We write plausible…

We study a N=1 Supergravity chaotic inflationary model, in the context of the braneworld scenario. It is shown that successful inflation and reheating consistent with phenomenological constraints can be achieved via the new terms in the…

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…

Supersymmetric hybrid inflation is an exquisite framework to connect inflationary cosmology to particle physics at the scale of grand unification. Ending in a phase transition associated with spontaneous symmetry breaking, it can naturally…

When supersymmetry is spontaneously broken it will be generically non-linearly realized. A method to describe the non-linear realization of supersymmetry is with constrained superfields. We discuss the basic features of this description and…

We show that in supersymmetry one can obtain inflationary potentials in the observable sector that are sufficiently flat at sub-Planckian field values. Structure of the supersymmetric scalar potential along a flat direction combined with…

This is a version of the author's Ph.D. thesis. The methods of effective field theory are used to study generic theories of inflation with a single inflaton field and to perform a general analysis of the associated non-Gaussianities. We…

The paradigm of the inflationary universe provides a possible explanation for several observed cosmological properties. In order for such solutions to be successful, the universe must convert the energy stored in the inflaton potential into…

Quantization implies independent degrees of freedom that do not appear in the classical theory, given by fluctuations, correlations, and higher moments of a state. A systematic derivation of the resulting dynamical systems is presented here…

We present a series of theoretical constraints on the potentially viable inflation models that might yield a blue spectrum for primordial tensor perturbations. By performing a detailed dynamical analysis we show that, while there exists…

We study classes of inflation models driven by antisymmetric tensor field, with minimal and nonminimal couplings to gravity, that address known issues of such models considered in the past. First we show that with a different choice of the…

We investigate the possibility of obtaining inflationary solutions of the slow roll type from a low energy Lagrangian coming from superstrings. The advantage of such an approach is that in these theories the scalar potential has only one…

We derive a simple model-independent upper bound on the strength of magnetic fields obtained in inflationary and post-inflationary magnetogenesis taking into account the constraints imposed by the condition of weak coupling, back-reaction…

We show that quantum corrections to the effective potential in supersymmetric hybrid inflation can be calculated all the way from the inflationary period - when the Universe is dominated by a false vacuum energy density - till the fields…

Realising $F$-term slow-roll inflation in supergravity is non-trivial due to the well-known $\eta$-problem. The common strategy to solve the problem is to impose a shift symmetry on the K\"ahler potential, but this often leads to a negative…

Inflation models are compared with observation on the assumption that the curvature perturbation is generated from the vacuum fluctuation of the inflaton field. The focus is on single-field models with canonical kinetic terms, classified as…

Inflation, as currently understood, requires the presence of fields with very flat potentials. Supersymmetric models in which supersymmetry breaking is communicated by supergravity naturally yield such fields, but the scales are typically…

Attempts to construct string derived effective field theory models realizing large field inflation are plagued by control issues. Targeted at a broader audience, in this article we review recent progress in isolating the underlying…

We consider the potential problems due to the production of inflatinos and gravitinos after inflation. Inflationary models with a single scale set by the microwave background anisotropies have a low enough reheat temperature to avoid…