Related papers: Infrared Logarithms in Minisuperspace Inflation
In principle, the tensor metric (gravity-wave) perturbations that arise in inflationary models can, beyond probing the underlying inflationary model, provide information about the Universe: ionization history, presence of a cosmological…
We examine the consequences of Lorentz violation during slow-roll inflation. We consider a canonical scalar inflaton coupled, through its potential, to the divergence of a fixed-norm timelike vector field, or "aether." The vector is…
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…
We initiate the study of multi-field inflation using holography. Bulk light scalar fields correspond to nearly marginal operators in the boundary theory and the dual quantum field theory is a deformation of a CFT by such operators. We…
We consider slow-roll inflation in the context of recently proposed four-dimensional effective gravity induced on the world-volume of a three-brane in five-dimensional Einstein gravity. We find significant modifications of the simplest…
The evolution of gauge invariant second-order scalar perturbations in a general single field inflationary scenario are presented. Different second order gauge invariant expressions for the curvature are considered. We evaluate…
Inflation is studied in the context of induced gravity (IG) $\gamma \sigma^2 R$, where $R$ is the Ricci scalar, $\sigma$ a scalar field and $\gamma$ a dimensionless constant. We study in detail cosmological perturbations in IG and examine…
We investigate the constraints of slow-roll inflation on the string worldsheet. A general gravity-matter set-up is used in which the worldsheet consists of an abstract CFT coupled to a 3+1 dimensional non-linear sigma model. The empirical…
Inflation may have been driven by a component which violated the Null-Energy Condition, thereby leading to {\it super inflation}. We provide the formalism to study cosmological perturbations when such a component is described by a scalar…
The scalar field theory of cosmological inflation constitutes nowadays one of the preferred scenarios for the physics of the early universe. In this paper we aim at studying the inflationary universe making use of a numerical lattice…
We review some theoretical and statistical aspects of the origin of the large-scale structure in the Universe, in view of the two most widely known and accepted scenarios: the inflaton and the curvaton scenarios. Among the theoretical…
We investigate models of `intermediate' inflation, where the scale factor $a(t)$ grows as $a(t) = \exp (A t^f)$, $0 < f < 1$, $A$ constant. These solutions arise as exact analytic solutions for a given class of potentials for the inflaton…
We study inflation driven by a slow-rolling inflaton field, characterised by a quadratic potential, and incorporating radiative corrections within the context of supergravity. In this model the energy scale of inflation is not overly…
Within the framework of hybrid metric-Palatini gravity, we incorporate non-localities introduced via the inverse of the d'Alembert operators acting on the scalar curvature. We analyse the dynamical structure of the theory and, adopting a…
Slow-roll inflation can be studied as an effective field theory. The form of the inflaton potential consistent with the data is V(phi) = N M^4 w(phi/[sqrt{N} M_{Pl}]) where phi is the inflaton field, M is the inflation energy scale, and N ~…
If the large scale anomalies in the temperature power spectrum of the cosmic microwave background are of primordial origin, they may herald modifications to the slow roll inflationary paradigm on the largest scales. We study the possibility…
The holographic entropy bound is used to estimate the quantum-gravitational discreteness of inflationary perturbations. In the context of scalar inflaton perturbations produced during standard slow-roll inflation, but assuming that…
We derive a set of equations monitoring the evolution of covariant and gauge-invariant linear scalar perturbations of Friedman-Lema\^itre-Robertson-Walker models with multiple interacting non-linear scalar fields. We use a dynamical…
If the expansion of the early Universe was not close to de Sitter, the statistical imprints of the primordial density perturbation on the cosmic microwave background can be quite different from those derived in slow-roll inflation. In this…
Because of the non-linearity of the Einstein equations, the cosmological fluctuations which are generated during inflation on a wide range of wavelengths do not evolve independently. In particular, to second order in perturbation theory,…