Related papers: Extranatural Inflation Redux
The quintessence field coupled to the cosmic neutrino background (CNB) has been widely discussed as an alternative mechanism to address the coincidence problem. As it is well known, it is possible to extend such models to obtain…
Cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropy may result from both scalar and tensor perturbations. For a sufficiently narrow range of angular scales, CMB perturbations can be characterized by four parameters. Results from the Cosmic…
Cosmic Inflation provides an attractive framework for understanding the early universe and the cosmic microwave background. It can readily involve energies close to the scale at which Quantum Gravity effects become important. General…
Inflation can occur near a point of inflection in the potential of flat directions of the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model. In this paper we elaborate on the complementarity between the bounds from Cosmic Microwave Background…
The weak gravity conjecture imposes severe constraints on natural inflation. A trans-Planckian axion decay constant can only be realized if the potential exhibits an additional (subdominant) modulation with sub-Planckian periodicity. The…
I review the general aspects of cosmological parameter estimation from observations of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature anisotropies in the framework of inflationary adiabatic models. The most recent CMB datasets are…
We investigate a novel scenario of cosmological inflation in a gauged $B-L$ extended minimal supersymmetric Standard Model with R-symmetry. We use a noncanonical K\"{a}hler potential and a superpotential, both preserving the R-symmetry to…
A novel framework is proposed for embedding the natural inflation into the type IIA superstrings compactified on a Calabi-Yau (CY) three-fold. Inflaton is identified with axion of the Universal Hypermultiplet (UH). The other UH scalars…
We generalise Starobinsky's model of inflation to space-times with $D>4$ dimensions, where $D-4$ dimensions are compactified on a suitable manifold. The $D$-dimensional action features Einstein-Hilbert gravity, a higher-order curvature…
We discuss the implications for cosmic microwave background (CMB) observables, of a class of pre-inflationary dynamics suggested by string models where SUSY is broken due to the presence of D-branes and orientifolds preserving incompatible…
The cosmic history before the BBN is highly determined by the physics that operates beyond the Standard Model (BSM) of particle physics and it is poorly constrained observationally. Ongoing and future precision measurements of the CMB…
A scenario with two subsequent periods of inflationary expansion in the very early universe is examined. The model is based on a potential motivated by symmetries being found in field theory at high energy. For various parameter sets of the…
Extensions of the Standard Model and general relativity featuring a UV fixed point can leave observable implications at accessible energies. Although mass parameters such as the Planck scale can appear through dimensional transmutation, all…
We discuss cosmological inflation in the minimal Wess-Zumino model with a single massive chiral supermultiplet. With suitable parameters and assuming a plausible initial condition at the start of the inflationary epoch, the model can yield…
Due to universality and attractor properties, $\alpha$-attractor quintessential inflation establishes direct relations between inflationary observables such as the scalar tilt $n_s$ and the tensor-to-scalar ratio $r$, and late-time dark…
Many theories beyond the Standard Model include extra dimensions, though these have yet to be directly observed. In this work we consider the possibility of a compactification mechanism which both allows extra dimensions and is compatible…
Cosmic inflation, a period of accelerated expansion in the early universe, can give rise to large amplitude ultra-large scale inhomogeneities on distance scales comparable to or larger than the observable universe. The cosmic microwave…
The inflationary paradigm is extremely successful regarding predictions of temperature anisotropies in the CMB. However, inflation also makes predictions for a CMB B-mode polarization, which has not been detected. Moreover, the standard…
Boomerang, Maxima, DASI, CBI and VSA significantly increase the case for accelerated expansion in the early universe (the inflationary paradigm) and at the current epoch (dark energy dominance), especially when combined with data on high…
The scale at which supersymmetry is broken and the mechanism by which supersymmetry breaking is fed down to the observable sector has rich implications on the way Nature may have chosen to accomplish inflation. We discuss a simple model for…