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We re-examine the importance of slow-roll corrections during the evolution of cosmological perturbations in models of multi-field inflation. We find that in many instances the presence of light degrees of freedom leads to situations in…
The BICEP2 observation of a large tensor-to-scalar ratio, $r = 0.20^{+0.07}_{-0.05}$, implies that the inflaton $\phi$ in single-field inflation models must satisfy $\phi \sim 10M_{Pl}$ in order to produce sufficient inflation. This is a…
We discuss inflation models within supersymmetry and supergravity frameworks with a landscape of chiral superfields and one $U(1)$ shift symmetry which is broken by non-perturbative symmetry breaking terms in the superpotential. We label…
We propose a scenario where inflation is driven by non-minimally coupled massive vector fields. In an isotropic homogeneous universe these fields behave in presicely the same way as a massive minimally coupled scalar field. Therefore our…
Hybrid inflation is a two field model where inflation ends due to an instability. In the neighborhood of the instability point, the potential is very flat and the quantum fluctuations dominate over the classical motion of the inflaton and…
While cosmological inflation can erase primordial inhomogeneities, it is possible that inflation may not begin in a significantly inhomogeneous universe. This issue is particularly pressing in multifield scenarios, where even the…
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…
We analyze and compare the multi-field dynamics during inflation and preheating in symmetric and asymmetric models of $\alpha$-attractors, characterized by a hyperbolic field-space manifold. We show that the generalized (asymmetric) E- and…
A generic non-minimal coupling can push any higher-order terms of the scalar potential sufficiently far out in field space to yield observationally viable plateau inflation. We provide analytic and numerical evidence that this generically…
We have constructed a large field N-flation model in the supergravity framework. In this simple set-up, N fields collectively drive inflation where each field traverses sub-Planckian field values. This has been realised with a…
Recent investigations have shown that inflation can be driven by four-dimensional strongly interacting theories non-minimally coupled to gravity. We explore this paradigm further by considering composite inflation driven by orientifold…
Hybrid inflation faces two well-known problems: the blue spectrum of the non-supersymmetric version of the model and the fine-tuning of the initial conditions of the fields leading to sufficient inflation to account for the standard…
We examine the dynamics of inflation driven by multiple, interacting scalar fields and derive a multi field version of the Hubble slow roll expansion. We show that the properties of this expansion naturally generalize those of the single…
We analyze the flow into inflation for generic "single-clock" systems, by combining an effective field theory approach with a dynamical-systems analysis. In this approach, we construct an expansion for the potential-like term in the…
We investigate the possibility of inflation with models of antisymmetric tensor field having minimal and nonminimal couplings to gravity. Although the minimal model does not support inflation, the nonminimal models, through the introduction…
We study boundary crossing probability in the context of stochastic inflation. We prove that for a generic multi-field inflationary potential, the probability that the inflaton reaches infinitely far regions in the field space is critically…
We compare the standard single scalar field inflationary predictions with those of an inflationary phase driven by a tachyon field. A slow-roll formalism is defined for tachyon inflation, and we derive the spectra of scalar and tensor…
Inflationary models based on a single scalar field $\phi$ with a quadratic potential $V = \frac{1}{2} m^2 \phi^2$ are disfavoured by the recent Planck constraints on the scalar index, $n_s$, and the tensor-to-scalar ratio for cosmological…
We consider the dynamics of power-law inflation with a nonminimally coupled scalar field $\phi$. It is well known that multiple scalar fields with exponential potentials $V(\phi)=V_0 {\rm exp}(-\sqrt{16\pi/p m_{\rm pl}^2} \phi)$ lead to an…
We study models of modular inflation of the form expected to arise from low energy effective actions of superstring theories. We argue on general grounds that the most likely models of modular slow-roll inflation are small field models in…