Related papers: QCD Axion Window and False Vacuum Higgs Inflation
In SuperCool Inflation (SCI), a technically natural and thermal effect gives a graceful exit to old inflation. The Universe starts off hot and trapped in a false vacuum. The Universe supercools and inflates solving the horizon and flatness…
If the inflationary phase lasted longer than the minimal period, the length scales observed today originate from modes that were smaller than the Planck length during inflation. It was recently argued that this "trans-Planckian problem" can…
We find the best-fit cosmological parameters for a scenario of inflation with only the sufficient amount of accelerated expansion for the $\lambda\phi^4$ potential. While for the simplest scenario of chaotic inflation all observable…
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…
I give a general formulation of the constraints on models of inflation ended by a first order phase transition arising from the requirement that they do not produce too many large (observable) true vacuum voids -- the `big bubble problem'.…
The Standard Model Higgs boson with large nonminimal coupling to the gravitational curvature can drive cosmological inflation. We study this type of inflationary scenario in the context of supersymmetric grand unification and point out that…
Phenomenological effect of the super-inflation in loop quantum cosmology (LQC) is discussed. We investigate the case that the Universe is filled with the interacting field between massive scalar field and radiation. Considering the damping…
We show that in generic supergravity theories the mass of the moduli during inflation is larger (or at least of the same order of magnitude) than the Hubble constant. This fact does not depends on the details of the inflation and on the…
We discuss inflation models within supersymmetry and supergravity frameworks with a landscape of chiral superfields and one $U(1)$ shift symmetry which is broken by non-perturbative symmetry breaking terms in the superpotential. We label…
In this work, we investigated the electroweak vacuum instability during or after inflation. In the inflationary Universe, i.e., de Sitter space, the vacuum field fluctuations $\left< {\delta \phi }^{ 2 } \right>$ enlarge in proportion to…
We develop the formalism for computing gravitational corrections to vacuum decay from de Sitter space as a sub-Planckian perturbative expansion. Non-minimal coupling to gravity can be encoded in an effective potential. The Coleman bounce…
We consider the effect of a period of inflation with a high energy density upon the stability of the Higgs potential in the early universe. The recent measurement of a large tensor-to-scalar ratio, $r_T \sim 0.16$, by the BICEP-2 experiment…
It is an interesting question whether low energy degrees of freedom may be responsible for early universe inflation. To examine this, here we present a simple version of Higgs-inflation with minimal coupling to gravity and a quadratic…
In the absence of new physics around $10^{10}$ GeV, the electroweak vacuum is at best metastable. This represents a major challenge for high scale inflationary models as, during the early rapid expansion of the universe, it seems difficult…
A simple realization of inflation consists of adding the following operators to the Einstein-Hilbert action: (partial phi)^2, lambda phi^4, and xi phi^2 R, with xi a large non-minimal coupling. Recently there has been much discussion as to…
The BICEP2 observations, if confirmed, point to a high scale of inflation and large field excursions during the inflationary era. Non-compact string moduli spaces are a suggestive setting for these phenomena. While unlikely to be described…
Current bounds on the tensor-to-scalar ratio imply that the energy scale of inflation may lie below the grand-unified scale. In this paper, we show that in a broad class of single-field inflation models with sufficiently small energy…
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…
Generically, the gravitational-wave or tensor-mode contribution to the primordial curvature spectrum of inflation is tiny if the field-range of the inflaton is much smaller than the Planck scale. We show that this pessimistic conclusion is…
Non-perturbative corrections from loop quantum cosmology (LQC) to the scalar matter sector is already known to imply inflation. We prove that the LQC modified scalar field generates exponential inflation in the small scale factor regime,…