Related papers: Interferometer Constraints on the Inflationary Fie…
[Abridged] The primordial scalar power spectrum is well constrained on large scales, primarily by the observations of the anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background (CMB). Over the last few years, it has been recognized that a sharp…
Inflationary cosmology provides a natural mechanism for the generation of primordial perturbations which seed the formation of observed cosmic structure and lead to specific signals of anisotropy in the cosmic microwave background…
We investigate models of `intermediate' inflation, where the scale factor $a(t)$ grows as $a(t) = \exp (A t^f)$, $0 < f < 1$, $A$ constant. These solutions arise as exact analytic solutions for a given class of potentials for the inflaton…
We study models of inflation where the inflaton corresponds to a flat direction in field space and its mass term is generated by gravity mediated soft supersymmetry breaking at high scale. Assuming the inflaton to have non negligible…
The detection of primordial gravitational waves would offer a direct evidence of inflation and valuable insights into the dynamics of the early universe. During post-inflation reheating period, when the inflaton coherently oscillates at the…
The scale--independence of the primordial curvature perturbation suggests that it comes from the vacuum fluctuation during inflation of a light scalar field. This field may be the inflaton, or a different `curvaton' field. The observation…
The squeezed limit of the primordial curvature bispectrum is an extremely sensitive probe of new physics and encodes information about additional fields active during inflation such as their masses and spins. In the conventional setup,…
Tensor non-Gaussianity represents an important future probe of the physics of inflation. Inspired by recent works, we elaborate further on the possibility of significant primordial tensor non-Gaussianities sourced by extra fields during…
We assay how inflationary models whose properties are dominated by the dynamics of a single scalar field are constrained by cosmic microwave background (CMB) data from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP). We classify…
We derive general analytic formulae for the power spectrum and spectral index of the curvature perturbation produced during inflation driven by a multi-component inflaton field, up to the second order in the slow-roll approximation. We do…
The Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe microwave background data suggest that the primordial spectrum of scalar curvature fluctuations is suppressed at small wavenumbers. We propose a UV/IR mixing effect in small-field inflationary models…
A claimed detection of cosmological tensor perturbations from inflation via B-mode polarization of the cosmic microwave background requires distinguishing other possible B-mode sources. One such potential source of confusion is primordial…
The spectrum of primordial fluctuations from inflation can be obtained using a mathematically controlled, and systematically extendable, uniform approximation. Closed-form expressions for power spectra and spectral indices may be found…
In the standard slow-roll inflationary cosmology, quantum fluctuations in a single field, the inflaton, generate approximately Gaussian primordial density perturbations. At present, the bispectrum and trispectrum of the density…
We propose a new single field inflation model in which the usual slow-roll inflation is joined to a new period of slow-climb and slow-roll inflation through a short intermediate non-inflationary phase. We then show that primordial curvature…
In addition to density perturbations, inflationary models of the early universe generally predict a stochastic background of gravitational waves or tensor fluctuations. By making use of the inflationary flow approach for single field models…
Recent theoretical results indicate that the detection of primordial gravity waves from inflation may be a hopeless task. First, foregrounds from lensing put a strict lower limit on the detectability of the B-mode polarization signal in the…
Any attempt to understand the ubiquitous nature of the magnetic field in the present universe seems to lead us towards its primordial origin. For large-scale magnetic fields, however, their strength and length scale may not necessarily…
A first-order phase transition in the early universe can give an observable stochastic gravitational background (SGWB), which will necessarily have primordial anisotropies across the sky. In multi-field inflationary scenarios, these…
We consider the impact of thermal inflation -- a short, secondary period of inflation that can arise in supersymmetric scenarios -- on the stochastic gravitational wave background. We show that while the primordial inflationary…