Related papers: Extranatural Inflation Redux
Motivated by recent cosmological observations of a possibly unsuppressed primordial tensor component $r$ of inflationary perturbations, we reanalyse in detail the 5D conformal SUGRA originated natural inflation model of Ref. [1]. The model…
Fluctuations in the intensity and polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) and the large-scale distribution of matter in the universe each contain clues about the nature of the earliest moments of time. The next generation of…
Forthcoming cosmic microwave background experiments (CMB) will provide precise new tests of structure-formation theories. The geometry of the Universe may be determined robustly, and the classical cosmological parameters, such as the…
The recent data from the Boomerang and MAXIMA-1 balloon flights have marked the beginning of the precision era of Cosmic Microwave Background anisotropy (CMB) measurements. We investigate the observational constraints from the current CMB…
A novel approach to quintessential inflation model building is studied, within the framework of $\alpha$-attractors, motivated by supergravity theories. Inflationary observables are in excellent agreement with the latest CMB observations,…
We investigate the effects of non-zero spatial curvature on cosmic inflation in the light of cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropy measurements from the Planck 2018 legacy release and from the 2015 observing season of BICEP2 and the…
We present a simple inflationary scenario that can produce arbitrarily large spherical underdense or overdense regions embedded in a standard Lambda cold dark matter paradigm, which we refer to as bubbles. We analyze the effect such bubbles…
A radiative seesaw model with an inert doublet dark matter is a promising candidate which could explain the existence of neutrino masses, dark matter and baryon number asymmetry of the Universe, simultaneously. In addition to these issues,…
There is solid theoretical and observational motivation behind the idea of scale-invariance as a fundamental symmetry of Nature. We consider a recently proposed classically scale-invariant inflationary model, quadratic in curvature and…
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…
We reevaluate the predictions of inflation regarding primordial gravity waves, which should appear as B-modes in the CMB, in light of the fact that the standard inflationary paradigm is unable to account for the transition from an initially…
We use cosmic microwave background (CMB) data from the 9-year WMAP release to derive constraints on monodromy inflation, which is characterized by a linear inflaton potential with a periodic modulation. We identify two possible periodic…
In this article we review the theory of cosmological inflation with a particular focus on the beautiful connection it provides between the physics of the very small and observations of the very large. We explain how quantum mechanical…
Measurements of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) favour models of inflation with a small tensor-to-scalar ratio r, as predicted by the Starobinsky R + R^2 model. It has been shown previously that various models based on no-scale…
We report forecast constraints on warm inflation in the light of future cosmic microwave background (CMB) surveys, with data expected to be available in the coming decade. These observations could finally give us the missing information…
Astrophysical observations provide the best evidence of physics beyond the particle physicists' standard model. Over the past decade, the case has solidified for inflation, dark energy, dark matter and massive neutrinos. In this report we…
I present a pedagogical review of inflation and the cosmic microwave background. I describe how a short period of accelerated expansion can replace the special initial conditions of the standard big bang model. I also describe the…
Inflationary cosmology has proved to be the most successful at predicting the properties of the anisotropies observed in the cosmic microwave background (CMB). In this essay we show that quantum field renormalization significantly…
The prediction of a nearly scale-invariant spectrum of curvature and tensor fluctuations is among the main features of cosmic inflation. The current measurements of the primordial fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background (CMB)…
Models of cosmological inflation resembling the Starobinsky R + R^2 model emerge naturally among the effective potentials derived from no-scale SU(N,1)/SU(N) x U(1) supergravity when N > 1. We display several examples in the SU(2,1)/SU(2) x…