Related papers: Structure Formation with Two Periods of Inflation:…
Moduli fields, which parameterize perturbative flat directions of the potential in supersymmetric theories, are natural candidates to act as inflatons. An inflationary potential on moduli space can result if the scale of dynamical SUSY…
Recent Planck data show the anomalies of CMB fluctuations on large angular scales, which confirms the early observations by WMAP. We continue studying an inflationary model, in which before the slow roll inflation the universe is in a…
We analyse the dynamics of spinodal decomposition in inflationary cosmology using the closed time path formalism of out of equilibrium quantum field theory combined with the non-perturbative Hartree approximation. In addition to a general…
Perhaps the deepest mystery of our accelerating Universe in expansion is the existence of a tiny and rigid cosmological constant, $\Lambda$. Its size is many orders of magnitude below the expected one in the standard model of particle…
In this work we study the imprints of bubble nucleation on primordial inflationary perturbations. We assume that the bubble is formed via the tunneling of a spectator field from the false vacuum of its potential to its true vacuum. We…
Power spectra always play an important role in the theory of inflation. In particular, the ability to reproduce the galaxy matter power spectrum and the CMB temperature angular power spectrum coefficients to high accuracy is often…
Last year we argued that if slow-roll inflation followed the decay of a false vacuum in a large landscape, the steepening of the scalar potential between the inflationary plateau and the barrier generically leads to a potentially observable…
Power suppression of the cosmic microwave background on the largest observable scales could provide valuable clues about the particle physics underlying inflation. Here we consider the prospect of power suppression in the context of the…
We investigate inflationary scenarios driven by a class of potentials which are similar in form to those that arise in certain minimal supersymmetric extensions of the standard model. We find that these potentials allow a brief period of…
Assuming that inflation happened through a series of tunneling in the string theory landscape, it is argued that one can determine the structure of vacua using precise measurements of the scalar spectral index and tensor perturbations at…
The interplay between non-minimally coupled scalar fields and a kinetic-dominated era following the end of inflation triggers the spontaneous symmetry breaking of internal symmetries and the subsequent evolution of the fields towards large…
A class of inflationary models that involve rapid bursts of particle productions predict observational signatures, such as bump-like features in the primordial scalar power spectrum. In this work, we analyze such models by comparing their…
We consider small-field models which invoke the usual framework for the effective field theory, and large-field models which go beyond that. Present and future possibilities for discriminating between the models are assessed, on the…
We show that a moduli space of the form predicted by string theory, lifted by supersymmetry breaking, gives rise to successful inflation for large regions of parameter space without any modification or fine tuning. This natural realization…
We investigate to what extent future microwave background experiments might be able to detect a suppression of fluctuation power on large scales in flat and open universe models. Such suppression would arise if fluctuations are generated by…
We revisit two-field hybrid inflation as an effective field theory for low-scale inflation with sub-Planckian scalar field ranges. We focus on a prototype model by Stewart because it allows for a red spectral tilt, which still fits the…
We introduce the framework of modular inflation with level structure, generalizing the level one theory considered previously to higher levels. We analyze the modular structure of CMB observables in this framework and show that the…
The properties of nearby galaxies that can be observed in great detail suggest that a better theory rather than cold dark matter (CDM) would describe in a better way a mechanism by which matter is more rapidly gathered into large-scale…
The existence of the inflationary era in the early Universe seems to be strongly supported by recent CMB observations. However, only a few realistic inflation scenarios which have close relation to particle physics seem to have been known…
Most models of inflation have small parameters, either to guarantee sufficient inflation or the correct magnitude of the density perturbations. In this paper we show that, in supersymmetric theories with weak scale supersymmetry breaking,…