Related papers: Geometrical destabilization, premature end of infl…
We show the existence of a general mechanism by which heavy scalar fields can be destabilized during inflation, relying on the fact that the curvature of the field space manifold can dominate the stabilizing force from the potential and…
An inflationary scenario is expected to be embedded into an ultraviolet (UV) complete theory such as string theory. The effect of UV complete theories may appear as nontrivial kinetic terms in the low energy effective field theory, which…
We study geometrical destabilization of inflation with the aim of determining the fate of excited unstable modes. We use numerical lattice simulations to track the dynamics of both the inflaton and the spectator field. We find that…
Heavy scalar fields can undergo an instability during inflation as a result of their kinetic couplings with the inflaton. This is known as the geometrical destabilization of inflation, as it relies on the effect of the negative curvature of…
We study the geometrical instability arising in multi-field models of inflation with negatively-curved field space. We analyse how the homogeneous background evolves in presence of geometrical destabilisation, and show that, in simple…
In this thesis we will primarily demonstrate how additional scalar degrees of freedom - which are motivated from many high-energy embeddings - open up new observational windows onto the physics of inflation. We construct a Bayesian…
We propose a model for cosmic inflation which is based on an effective description of strongly interacting, nonsupersymmetric matter within the framework of dynamical Abelian projection and centerization. The underlying gauge symmetry is…
In generic models of cosmological inflation, quantum fluctuations strongly influence the spacetime metric and produce infinitely many regions where the end of inflation (reheating) is delayed until arbitrarily late times. The geometry of…
We consider the effects of the curvaton, late-decaying scalar condensation, to observational constraints on inflation models. From current observations of cosmic density fluctuations, severe constraints on some class of inflation models are…
Primordial perturbations with wavelengths greater than the observable universe shift the effective background fields in our observable patch from their global averages over the inflating space. This leads to a landscape picture where the…
We investigate the feasibility of models of inflation with a large Gauss-Bonnet coupling at late times, which have been shown to modify and prevent the end of inflation. Despite the potential of Gauss-Bonnet models in predicting favourable…
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…
The pre-big-bang cosmology inspired by superstring theories has been suggested as an alternative to slow-roll inflation. We analyze, in both the Jordan and Einstein frames, the effect of spatial curvature on this scenario and show that too…
Even simple inflationary scenarios have many free parameters. Beyond the variables appearing in the inflationary action, these include dynamical initial conditions, the number of fields, and couplings to other sectors. These quantities are…
We propose a model for cosmic inflation which is based on an effective description of strongly interacting, nonsupersymmetric matter within the framework of dynamical abelian projection and centerization. The underlying gauge symmetry is…
We show that multi-field inflationary models with negligible turning in field space during inflation can lead to an effective sourcing of adiabatic from entropic perturbations {\it after} the end of inflation. We illustrate this general…
The precision era of cosmology demands accurate theoretical predictions from inflationary models. In quantitative reheating analyses, inflationary observables depend sensitively on the number of e-folds between horizon exit and the end of…
The purpose of these lectures is to give a pedagogical introduction to inflation and the production of primordial perturbations, as well as a review of some of the latest developments in this domain. After a short introduction, we review…
In this paper we investigate the cosmological dynamics of geometric inflation by means of the tools of the dynamical systems theory. We focus in the study of two explicit models where it is possible to sum the infinite series of higher…
We study the effect on the primordial cosmological perturbations of a sharp transition from inflationary to a radiation and matter dominated epoch respectively. We assume that the perturbations are generated by the vacuum fluctuations of a…