Related papers: Light Particles with Spin in Inflation
We present a model-independent argument showing that massless particles interacting with gravity in a Minkowski background space can have at most spin two. This result is proven by extending a famous theorem due to Weinberg and Witten to…
We propose a new class of inflation model, G-inflation, which has a Galileon-like nonlinear derivative interaction of the form $G(\phi, (\nabla\phi)^2)\Box\phi$ in the Lagrangian with the resultant equations of motion being of second order.…
Chromo-Natural Inflation is the first worked example of a model of inflation in which slow-roll inflation is achieved by "magnetic drift" as opposed to Hubble friction. In this work, we give an account of the perturbations at linear order…
The mutual compatibility of the dynamical equations and constraints describing a massive particle of arbitrary spin, though essential for consistency, is generically lost in the presence of interactions. The conventional Lagrangian approach…
The impact of particle production during inflation on the primordial curvature perturbation spectrum is investigated both analytically and numerically. We obtain an oscillatory behavior on small scales, while on large scales the spectrum is…
Higgs field of particle physics can play the role of the inflaton in the early universe, if it is non-minimally coupled to gravity. The Higgs inflation scenario predicts a small tensor to scalar ratio: $r\simeq 0.003$. Although this value…
In this letter, we consider effective field theories for light fields transforming under the fundamental or adjoint representation of a continuous group. We demonstrate that in the presence of gravity, crossing symmetry combined with two…
The tensor fraction $r\simeq 0.16$ found by BICEP2 corresponds to a Hubble parameter $H\simeq 1.0\times 10^{14}\GeV$ during inflation. This has two implications for the (single-field) slow-roll inflation hypothesis. First, the inflaton…
We study the gravitational production of heavy X-particles of mass of the order of the inflaton mass, produced after the end of inflation. We find that, in the presence of a derivative coupling of the inflaton field or of the X-field to the…
During cosmological inflation, it has been suggested that fields coupled to the inflaton can be excited by the slow-rolling inflaton into a quasi-stable non-vacuum state. Within this scenario of ``warm inflation'', this could allow for a…
We consider a scenario in which the inflaton $\phi$ is a pseudoscalar field non-minimally coupled to gravity through a term of the form ${\cal X} R \phi^2$. The pseudoscalar is also coupled to a $U(1)$ gauge field (or an ensemble of ${\cal…
We propose a new scenario for early cosmology, where an inflationary de Sitter phase is obtained with a ghost condensate. The transition to radiation dominance is triggered by the ghost itself, without any slow-roll potential. Density…
We investigate whether Higgs inflation can occur in the Standard Model starting from natural initial conditions or not. The Higgs has a non-minimal coupling to the Ricci scalar. We confine our attention to the regime where quantum Einstein…
We consider a new inflationary model in which an antisymmetric tensor field $A_{\nu\rho\sigma}$ and its four-form field strength $F_{\mu\nu\rho\sigma}=4\partial_{[\mu} A_{\nu\rho\sigma]}$ are coupled to the scalar sector of the standard…
We generalize the Effective Field Theory of Inflation to include additional light scalar degrees of freedom that are in their vacuum at the time the modes of interest are crossing the horizon. In order to make the scalars light in a natural…
We study the cosmological perturbations created during the New Higgs inflationary phase. In the New Higgs Inflation, the Higgs boson is kinetically coupled to the Einstein tensor and only three perturbative degrees of freedom, a scalar and…
In this paper we show that power-law inflation can be realized in non-minimal gravitational coupling of electromagnetic field with a general function of Gauss-Bonnet invariant. Such a non-minimal coupling may appear due to quantum…
In this letter we study the dynamics of the late Universe when a nonminimally coupled Higgs field is present. In general, the nonminimal coupling leads to a nontrivial mixing between the gravitational degrees of freedom and the Goldstone…
We study warm inflation in the framework of $f(\phi)T$ gravity, where $\phi$ is the inflaton and $T$ is the trace of the energy-momentum tensor. The inflaton field is assumed to roll on the natural potential and the result is analyzed in…
It has recently been suggested that a strongly coupled phase of inflation may be described holographically in terms of a weakly coupled quantum field theory (QFT). Here, we explore the possibility that the wave function of an inflationary…