Related papers: Cosmological Collider Physics and the Curvaton
In inflationary cosmological models driven by an inflaton field the origin of the primordial inhomogeneities which are responsible for large scale structure formation are the quantum fluctuations of the inflaton field. These are usually…
Large-field inflation is a major class of inflation models featuring a near- or super-Planckian excursion of the inflaton field. We point out that the large excursion generically introduces significant scale dependence to spectator fields…
We examine the effective theory of single-field inflation in the limit where the scalar perturbations propagate with a small speed of sound. In this case the non-linearly realized time-translation symmetry of the Lagrangian implies large…
A setting constituted by $\mathbb{N}$ 3-form fields, without any direct interaction between them, minimally coupled to gravity, is introduced in this paper as a framework to study the early evolution of the universe. We focus particularly…
We study a model where two scalar fields, that are subdominant during inflation, decay into radiation some time after inflation has ended but before primordial nucleosynthesis. Perturbations of these two curvaton fields can be responsible…
We study signatures in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) induced by the presence of strong spatial curvature prior to the epoch of inflation which generated our present universe. If inflation does not last sufficiently long to drive the…
We study the slow-roll inflation models, where the inflaton slow-rolls along a trajectory whose orthogonal directions are lifted by potentials with masses of order the Hubble parameter. In these models large non-Gaussianities can be…
Inflationary era of our Universe can be characterized as semi-classical because it can be described in the context of four-dimensional Einsteins's gravity involving quantum corrections. These string motivated corrections originate from…
We study a scalar field with non-minimal kinetic coupling to itself and to the curvature. The slow rolling conditions allowing an inflationary background have been found. The quadratic and Higgs type potentials have been considered, and the…
Several recent proposals to embed inflation into high-energy physics rely on inflationary dynamics characterized by a strongly non-geodesic motion in negatively curved field space. This naturally leads to a transient instability of…
We investigate the degree to which the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) can be used to constrain primordial non-Gaussianity coming from the presence of spinning particles coupled to the inflaton. We compute the $\langle TTT \rangle$ and…
This thesis is dedicated to studying cosmological inflation, which is a period of accelerated expansion in the very early Universe that is required to explain the observed anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background. Inflation, when…
Massive particles leave imprints on primordial non-Gaussianity via couplings to the inflaton, even despite their exponential dilution during inflation: practically, the Universe acts as a Cosmological Collider. We present the first…
Heavy isocurvature fields may have a strong influence on the low energy dynamics of curvature perturbations during inflation, as long as the inflationary trajectory becomes non-geodesic in the multi-field target space (the landscape). If…
The spatial curvature of the universe is not yet known. Even though at present the Universe is very close to being essentially flat and most signatures of curvature appear to have been diluted by inflation, if the number of e-foldings…
We study primordial perturbations from hyperinflation, proposed recently and based on a hyperbolic field-space. In the previous work, it was shown that the field-space angular momentum supported by the negative curvature modifies the…
Scalar-tensor theories of gravity that embrace conformal coupling to the scalar curvature are the focal point of cosmology on discussions of inflation and late-time accelerating universe. Although there exists a stringent nucleo-synthesis…
We study a model of inflation in which a scalar field $\chi$ is non-minimally coupled to Starobinsky's $R^2$ gravity. After transforming it to the Einstein frame, a new scalar field, the scalaron $\phi$, will appear and couple to $\chi$…
We consider inflation in the system containing a Ricci scalar squared term and a canonical scalar field with quadratic mass term. In the Einstein frame this model takes the form of a two-field inflation model with a curved field space, and…
In axion gauge field inflation an axion-like particle driving cosmic inflation is coupled to the Chern-Simons density of an Abelian or non-Abelian gauge group. In the case of a non-Abelian gauge group, this can lead to the formation of a…