Related papers: The Black Hole Window on Cosmic Inflation
During inflation, vacuum quantum fluctuations are amplified and stretched to astrophysical distances. They give rise to fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature and polarisation, and to large-scale structures in our…
It has been recently proposed that the interior of a black hole is vacuum energy, and this offers a possible explanation for the dark energy of the current observable universe. In this article we explore the idea that black holes are a…
It is known that the single-field inflation with a transient ultra-slow-roll phase can produce a large curvature perturbation at small scales for the formation of primordial black holes. In our previous work, we have considered quantum loop…
We summarize our work on the generation of primordial black holes in a type of two-field inflationary models. The key ingredient is a sharp turn of the background trajectory in field space. We show that certain classes of solutions to the…
We devise a novel mechanism and for the first time demonstrate that the Higgs model in particle physics can drive the inflation to satisfy the cosmic microwave background observations and simultaneously enhance the curvature perturbations…
The purpose of these lectures is to give a pedagogical introduction to inflation and the production of primordial perturbations, as well as a review of some of the latest developments in this domain. After a short introduction, we review…
We present new single field inflationary scenarios that produce the critical abundance of primordial black holes as dark matter reconstructing the inflaton potential from an input power spectrum. The method is exact in the slow roll…
This is a completely rewritten version of the talk I gave at the Philosophy of Cosmology conference in Tenerife, September 2014, which incorporates elements of my IFT Madrid Anthropics Conference talk. The original was too technical. The…
We explore how inflationary features shape the early stages of cosmic structure formation. Using the transfer function formalism, we trace the evolution of primordial perturbations, showing how causal physics and oscillatory signatures from…
All single-field inflationary models invoke varying degrees of tuning in order to account for cosmological observations. Mechanisms that generate primordial black holes (PBHs) from enhancement of primordial power at small scales posit…
Inflation provides a natural mechanism to account for the origin of cosmic structures. The generation of primordial inhomogeneities during inflation can be understood via the spontaneous creation of quanta from the vacuum. We show that when…
Evidence has accumulated that there are supermassive black holes (SMBHs) in the centers of most galaxies, and that these were formed in the very early universe by some as yet unknown process. In particular, there is evidence [15] that at…
Primordial black hole (PBH) abundance limits constrain the primordial power spectrum, and hence models of inflation, on scales far smaller than those probed by cosmological observations. Single field inflation models which are compatible…
Primordial black holes (PBHs) provide an exciting prospect for accounting for dark matter. In this paper, we consider inflationary models that incorporate realistic features from high-energy physics -- including multiple interacting scalar…
We study the formation of primordial black holes and the generation of gravitational waves in a class of cosmological models that are direct supersymmetric analogs of the observationally favored nonminimally coupled Higgs inflation model.…
Using numerical solutions of the full Einstein field equations coupled to a scalar inflaton field in 3+1 dimensions, we study the conditions under which a universe that is initially expanding, highly inhomogeneous and dominated by gradient…
Primordial black holes could constitute part or all of dark matter but they require large inhomogeneities to form in the early universe. These inhomogeneities can strongly backreact on the large scale dynamics of the universe. Stochastic…
We explore the role of dissipative effects during warm inflation leading to the small-scale enhancement of the power spectrum of curvature perturbations. In this paper, we specifically focus on non-canonical warm inflationary scenarios and…
This review article aims at presenting the theory of inflation. We first describe the background spacetime behavior during the slow-roll phase and analyze how inflation ends and the Universe reheats. Then, we present the theory of…
The formation of primordial black holes is studied using superconformal inflationary $\alpha$-attractors. An inflaton potential is constructed with a plateau-like region which brings about the onset of an ultra slow-roll region where the…