Related papers: Intermittent null energy condition violations duri…
We study thermally induced density perturbations during inflation. This scenario is characterized by two thermodynamical conditions: (1) The primordial perturbations originate in the epoch when the inflationary universe contains a…
We investigate if the observed small and nearly scale-invariant primordial cosmic perturbation, i.e. the perturbation amplitude $P_\zeta\sim10^{-9}$ and the spectral index $n_s \simeq 0.965$, is typical in the landscape of vacua after…
For a narrow band of values of the top quark and Higgs boson masses, the Standard Model Higgs potential develops a shallow local minimum at energies of about $10^{16}$ GeV, where primordial inflation could have started in a cold metastable…
A plateau on the background inflaton potential $V_{\rm b}(\phi)$ can lead cosmic inflation into an ultraslow-roll phase, greatly enhancing the primordial power spectrum on small scales, and resulting in intensive scalar-induced…
Cosmological phase transitions (CPTs), such as the Grand Unified Theory (GUT) and the electroweak (EW) ones, play a significant role in both particle physics and cosmology. In this letter, we propose to probe the first-order CPTs, by…
Inspired by string theory and cosmological constant problem, it is plausible that the Universe's vacuum structure is characterized by a landscape of metastable vacua. The existence of dark matter and dark energy further suggests that the…
Rotational invariance is a well-established feature of low-energy physics. Violations of this symmetry must be extremely small today, but could have been larger in earlier epochs. In this paper we examine the consequences of a small…
Extensions of the Standard Model typically contain ``flaton fields" defined as fields with large vacuum expectation values and almost flat potentials where scalar self-coupling is small or vanishes at tree level. Such potentials have been…
Temperature anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background offers a test of the fundamental symmetry of spacetime during cosmic inflation. Violation of rotational symmetry yields a distinct signature in the power spectrum of primordial…
The vacuum inflation with a boundary condition specified at a short-distance scale in a generally primeval non-flat Universe, and implications of the correspondingly modified primordial power spectrum via the WMAP data are investigated. We…
Assuming that inflation is succeeded by a phase of matter domination, which corresponds to a low temperature of reheating $T_r<10^9\rm{GeV}$, we evaluate the spectra of gravitational waves induced in the post-inflationary universe. We work…
It is widely accepted that the primordial universe experienced a brief period of accelerated expansion called inflation. This scenario provides a plausible solution to the horizon and flatness problems. However, the particle physics…
The recent claim by BICEP2 of evidence for primordial gravitational waves from inflation has focused interest on the potential for early-Universe cosmology using observations of gravitational waves. In addition to cosmic microwave…
We study the properties of the stochastic gravitational wave background (SGWB) produced by domain walls (DWs) during inflation without forming a network. We numerically simulate the DW production caused by a second-order phase transition…
Non-Gaussianity in the inflationary perturbations can couple observable scales to modes of much longer wavelength (even superhorizon), leaving as a signature a large-angle modulation of the observed cosmic microwave background (CMB) power…
Primordial Black Holes (PBH) could be the cold dark matter of the universe. They could have arisen from large (order one) curvature fluctuations produced during inflation that reentered the horizon in the radiation era. At reentry, these…
From a model-building perspective, the inflationary sector might very well have no direct couplings to other species, apart from inevitable gravitational interactions. Within the context of General Relativity, a thermal universe can still…
In this work we present several characteristic examples of theories of gravity and particle physics scenarios that may yield an observable energy spectrum of stochastic primordial gravitational waves, compatible with the 2023 NANOGrav…
A primordial gravitational wave background with positive(blue) spectral index is expected in several non-standard inflationary cosmologies where the stress-energy tensor violates the null energy condition. Here we show that a sizable amount…
In the very early Universe matter can be described as a conformal invariant ultra-relativistic perfect fluid, which does not contribute, on classical level, to the evolution of the isotropic and homogeneous metric. However, in this…