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We consider a possibility that one of the flat directions in the minimal supersymmetric standard model plays the role of the inflaton field and realizes large-field inflation. This is achieved by introducing a generalized shift symmetry on…
A safe way to reheat the universe, in models of natural and quadratic inflation, is through shift symmetric couplings between the inflaton $\phi$ and the Standard Model (SM), since they do not generate loop corrections to the potential…
Warm inflation has normalized two ideas in cosmology, that in the early universe the initial primordial density perturbations generally could be of classical rather than quantum origin and that during inflation, particle production from…
We present the first quantum field theory model of inflation that is renormalizable in the matter sector, with a super-Hubble inflaton mass and sub-Planckian field excursions, which is thus technically natural and consistent with a…
We study a new framework for brane-antibrane inflation where moduli stabilisation relies purely on perturbative corrections to the effective action. This guarantees that the model does not suffer from the eta-problem. The inflationary…
Fermion condensate inflation, where inflation emerges from four-fermion interactions induced by spacetime torsion, removes the need for additional scalar fields beyond the Standard Model. In this framework, the fermion field can be…
Inflation models can have an early phase of inflation where the evolution of the inflaton is driven by quantum fluctuations before entering the phase driven by the slope of the scalar field potential. For a Coleman-Weinberg potential this…
In supersymmetric theories a field can develop a vacuum expectation value $M \gg 10^3\,{\rm GeV}$, even though its mass $m$ is of order $10^2$ to $10^3\,{\rm GeV}$. The finite temperature in the early Universe can hold such a field at zero,…
Many models of high energy physics possess metastable vacua. It is conceivable that the universe can get trapped in such a false vacuum, irrespective of its origin and prior history, at an earlier stage during its evolution. The ensuing…
Flat directions in the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM) can become unstable due to radiative corrections, and the global minimum of the (zero temperature) potential can lie at large values of the squark and/or slepton fields.…
We study cosmological solutions for the very early universe beginning at the Planck scale for a universe containing radiation, curvature and, as a simplification of a possible scalar field potential, a cosmological constant term. The…
We reexamine the recently proposed "little inflation" scenario that allows for a strong first order phase-transition of QCD at non-negligible baryon number in the early universe and its possible observable consequences. The scenario is…
This thesis compiles the results of six works which deal with - inflationary model building and estimation of cosmological parameters from various field theoretic setup, quantification of reheating temperature, studies of leptogenesis in…
Following the recent Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT) results, we consider hilltop inflation where the inflaton is coupled to a curvaton, simultaneously addressing two main challenges faced by conventional hilltop inflation models: the…
We investigate the quantum cosmological tunneling scenario for inflationary models. Within a path-integral approach, we derive the corresponding tunneling probability distribution. A sharp peak in this distribution can be interpreted as the…
A variant of hybrid inflation which is applicable in a wide class of supersymmetric grand unified models and reproduces the observed temperature perturbations of cosmic background radiation with natural values of the parameters is…
We present a model with a complex and a real scalar fields and a potential whose symmetry is explicitly broken by Planck-scale physics. For exponentially small breaking, the model accounts for the period of inflation in the early universe…
We consider a quantum corrected inflation scenario driven by a generic GUT or Standard Model type particle model whose scalar field playing the role of an inflaton has a strong non-minimal coupling to gravity. We show that currently widely…
The recent measurement of a cutoff k_min in the fluctuation power spectrum P(k) of the cosmic microwave background may vitiate the possibility that slow-roll inflation can simultaneously solve the horizon problem and account for the…
Many different models of inflation give rise to the same effective field theory of the inflaton. While effective field theories in flat space provide little information about UV physics, we propose that in inflationary backgrounds a large…