Related papers: Tensor Bounds on the Hidden Universe
We consider a universe in which inflation commences because of a positive cosmological constant, the effect of which is progressively screened by the interaction between virtual gravitons that become trapped in the expansion of spacetime.…
Inflation generally assumes a field with nonzero potential that leads to inflationary expansion happening at arbitrarily early times. We demonstrate potentially observable consequences of inflation with a finite initial time in a model in…
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…
In order to gain new insights into the gauge field couplings in the early universe, we consider the constraints on gauge field production during inflation imposed by requiring that their effect on the CMB anisotropies are subdominant. In…
We consider the backreaction of the long wavelength tensor modes produced during a slow-roll inflationary regime driven by a single scalar field in a spatially flat Friedmann-Lema\^{\i}tre-Robertson-Walker background geometry. We…
We present a mechanism for realizing hybrid inflation using two axion fields with a purely non-perturbatively generated scalar potential. The structure of scalar potential is highly constrained by the discrete shift symmetries of the…
The trans-Planckian censorship conjecture (TCC) puts an upper bound on the life-time of de Sitter spacetimes. It has immediate consequences for inflationary cosmology. In the standard paradigm, the universe has experienced a single stage of…
Based on the conventional metric tensor and driven by a nearly constant energy density, cosmic inflation, characterized by a remarkably accelerated expansion, was proposed as an early epoch in the Universe. The energy density is typically…
We study the linear perturbation of the recently proposed model of inflation where a uniform gauge-kinetic coupling of the inflaton to multiple vector fields breaks the cosmic no-hair conjecture while maintaining the isotropy. We derive the…
The mechanism for triggering the universe inflation could be that at very early periods the time variable was discrete instead of smooth. Alternatively, and perhaps equivalently, it could be the consequence that the metrics of the early…
We investigate the validity of effective field theory methods and the decoupling of heavy fields during inflation. Considering models of inflation in which the inflaton is coupled to a heavy (super-Hubble) degree of freedom initially in its…
Recent observations opened up a new window on the inflationary model building. As it was firstly reported by the WMAP data, there may be some indications of statistical anisotropy on the CMB map, although the statistical significance of…
In loop quantum cosmology, the universe avoids a big bang singularity and undergoes an early and short super-inflation phase. During super-inflation, non-perturbative quantum corrections to the dynamics drive an inflaton field up its…
Inflationary and bouncing scenarios are two frameworks that provide the mechanism to overcome the horizon problem as well as generate the primordial perturbations. In this work, we investigate the conservation of perturbations in…
We consider the possibility of suppressing superhorizon curvature perturbations after the end of the ordinary slow-roll inflationary stage. This is the opposite of the curvaton limit. We assume that large curvature perturbations are created…
The linear and quadratic perturbations for a scalar-tensor model with non-minimal coupling to curvature, coupling to the Gauss-Bonnet invariant and non-minimal kinetic coupling to the Einstein tensor are developed. The quadratic action for…
Inflation is an early period of accelerated cosmic expansion, thought to be sourced by high energy physics. A key task today is to use the influx of increasingly precise observational data to constrain the plethora of inflationary models…
We present new constraints on spectator axion-${\rm U}(1)$ gauge field interactions during inflation using the latest $Planck$ (PR4) and BICEP/Keck 2018 data releases. This model can source tensor perturbations from amplified gauge field…
We revisit models of natural inflation and show that the single-field effective theory described by the potential $V(a)\sim \cos\frac{a}{f}$ breaks down as the inflaton $a$ makes large-field excursions, even for values of $f$ smaller than…
Using the fact that we only observe those modes which exit the Hubble horizon during inflation, one can calculate the entanglement entropy of such long-wavelength perturbations by tracing out unobservable sub-Hubble fluctuations they are…