Related papers: Confronting Inflation Models with the Coming Obser…
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…
We study the evolution of Gravitational Waves (GWs) during and after inflation as well as the resulting observational consequences in a Lorentz-violating massive gravity theory with one scalar (inflaton) and two tensor degrees of freedom.…
If observations confirm BICEP2's claim of a tensor-scalar ratio $r\approx 0.2$ on CMB scales, then the inflationary consistency relation $n_{t}=-r/8$ predicts a small negative value for the tensor spectral index $n_t$. We show that future…
I discuss how parameters describing inflation in the very early universe may be related to primordial perturbation spectra. Precision observations of anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) such as those provided by the WMAP…
The gravitational waves measured at LIGO are presumed here to come from merging primordial black holes. We ask how these primordial black holes could arise through inflationary models while not conflicting with current experiments. Among…
The isotropy and homogeneity of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) favors "scalar driven" early Universe inflationary models. Non-scalar fields, and in particular gauge fields, are on the other hand commonplace in all high energy…
Modified expansion rates in the early Universe prior to big bang nucleosynthesis are common in modified gravity theories, and can have a significant impact on the generation of dark matter, matter-antimatter asymmetry, primordial black…
Inflation elegantly provides initial conditions for the standard model of cosmology, while solving the horizon, flatness, and magnetic monopole problems. Inflationary models make predictions for the tensor-to-scalar ratio $r$ and the…
The advent of high-precision cosmological observations has challenged many traditional inflationary models. Data from $Planck$ 2018 along with the BICEP/$Keck$ 2018 result have already ruled out most of the established models by placing…
The theory of inflation provides an elegant explanation for the nearly flat universe observed today, which represents one of the pillars of the standard cosmological model. However, recent studies have reported some deviations from a flat…
Primordial scalar curvature perturbations ($\zeta$), typically probed on large cosmological scales via CMB and LSS observations, can be significantly enhanced on smaller scales by various early Universe mechanisms, for instance, non-minimal…
The (large-scale) structures we observe in the Universe are classical, but within the inflationary scenario they do originate from quantum fluctuations. This leads to the question: ''How did this quantum-to-classical transition occur?''. A…
A short introduction to structure formation is given, followed by a discussion of the possible characteristics of the initial perturbations assuming a generic inflationary origin. Observational data related to large-scale structure and the…
Particle phase transitions in the early universe including electroweak and grand unification ones are well-studied subjects. We point out that there are new possible particle phase transitions around inflation. Those new inflationary…
According to the famous Lyth bound, one can confirm large field inflation by finding tensor modes with sufficiently large tensor-to-scalar ratio $r$. Here we will try to answer two related questions: Is it possible to rule out all large…
The effective field theory (EFT) concept provides a necessary tool for obtaining general predictions of low-energy theory valid below its unitarity-breaking scale (cutoff scale). Early Universe inflation and subsequent reheating could be a…
We construct a class of single small field models of inflation that can predict, contrary to popular wisdom, an observable gravitational wave signal in the cosmic microwave background anisotropies. The spectral index, its running, the…
In this paper we will highlight how a simple vacuum energy dominated inflection-point inflation can match the current data from cosmic microwave background radiation, and predict large primordial tensor to scalar ratio, $r \sim…
Measuring the primordial power spectrum on small scales is a powerful tool in inflation model building, yet constraints from Cosmic Microwave Background measurements alone are insufficient to place bounds stringent enough to be appreciably…
Fluctuations in the intensity and polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) and the large-scale distribution of matter in the universe each contain clues about the nature of the earliest moments of time. The next generation of…