Related papers: Exploring extra dimensions through inflationary te…
We study an inflationary scenario where thermal inflation is followed by fast-roll inflation. This is a rather generic possibility based on the effective potentials of spontaneous symmetry breaking in the context of particle physics models.…
The brane-world scenario provides an intriguing possibility to explore the phenomenological cosmology implied by string/M theory. In this paper, we consider a modified Randall-Sundrum single brane model with two natural generalizations: a…
A long period of inflation can be triggered when the inflaton is held up on the top of a steep potential by the infrared end of a warped space. We first study the field theory description of such a model. We then embed it in the flux…
The viability of a given model for inflation is determined not only by the form of the inflaton potential, but also by the initial inflaton field configuration. In many models, field configurations which are otherwise well-motivated…
We explore the observational implications of models of intermediate inflation driven by modified dispersion relations, specifically those representing the phenomenon of dimensional reduction in the ultraviolet limit. These models are…
We compute the cosmological perturbations generated in the brane world inflation driven by the bulk inflaton. Different from the model that the inflation is a brane effect, we exhibit the modification of the power spectrum of scalar…
Probing correlations among short and long-wavelength cosmological fluctuations is known to be decisive for deepening the current understanding of inflation at the microphysical level. Spectral distortions of the CMB can be caused by…
We present a novel inflationary scenario in theories with low scale (TeV) quantum gravity, in which the standard model particles are localized on the branes whereas gravity propagates in the bulk of large extra dimensions. This inflationary…
The spectrum of inflationary tensor perturbations is one of the very few available probes of the post-inflationary reheating epoch, and it is strongly influenced by the Universe's equation of state during this period. In the current era of…
The curvaton scenario for the generation of the cosmological curvature perturbation on large scales represents an alternative to the standard slow-roll scenario of inflation in which the observed density perturbations are due to…
We obtain models of chaotic, slow--roll, hybrid and D--term inflation from the Hanany--Witten brane configuration and its deformations. The deformations are given by the different orientations of the branes and control the parameters of the…
We propose a novel scenario in which scalar perturbations, that seed the large scale structure of the Universe, are generated without relying on a scalar field (the inflaton). In this framework, inflation is driven by a de Sitter space-time…
We study Bianchi I type brane cosmologies with scalar matter self-interacting through combinations of exponential potentials. Such models correspond in some cases to inflationary universes. We discuss the conditions for accelerated…
The inflationary phase of the Universe is explored by proposing a toy model related to the scalar field, termed as {\it inflaton}. The potential part of the energy density in the said era is assumed to have a constant vacuum energy density…
We consider the spectrum of primordial fluctuations produced by inflationary models where the inflaton potential is the sum of two exponential terms. A wide range of spectra result, with the only constraint being that the scalar spectrum…
We explain why it is so difficult and perhaps even impossible to increase the cosmological tensor-to-scalar perturbation ratio during the post-inflationary evolution of the universe. Nevertheless, contrary to some recent claims, tensor…
We discuss an inflationary scenario based on Lovelock terms. These higher order curvature terms can lead to inflation when there are more than three spatial dimensions. Inflation will end if the extra dimensions are stabilised, so that at…
Axions play a central role in many realizations of large field models of inflation and in recent alternative mechanisms for generating primordial tensor modes in small field models. If these axions couple to gauge fields, the coupling…
F-term hybrid inflation models in the context of supergravity generically have corrections to the inflaton mass squared of the order of H^{2} (the \eta-problem). In addition they have a problem with large deviations of the spectrum of…
We consider the interaction between perturbations in the inflaton and in the metric during the preheating phase in simple inflationary models. By numerically integrating the Einstein field equations we are able to gauge the impact of…