Related papers: Inflaton Effective Potential from Photons for Gene…
We accurately approximate the contribution of a Yukawa-coupled fermion to the inflaton effective potential for inflationary geometries with a general first slow roll parameter $\epsilon(t)$. For $\epsilon = 0$ our final result agrees with…
We develop an analytic approximation for the coincidence limit of a massive scalar propagator in an arbitrary spatially flat, homogeneous and isotropic geometry. We employ this to compute the one loop corrections to the inflaton effective…
We consider reheating for a charged inflaton which is minimally coupled to electromagnetism. The evolution of such an inflaton induces a time-dependent mass for the photon. We show how the massive photon propagator can be expressed as a…
We use a recent result for the graviton contribution to the one loop vacuum polarization to solve the effective field equations for dynamical photons on de Sitter background. Our results show that the electric field experiences a secular…
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…
We describe models of single-field inflation with small and sharp step features in the potential (and sound speed) of the inflaton field, in the context of the Effective Field Theory of Inflation. This approach allows us to study the…
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…
We consider spatially averaged inhomogeneous universe models and argue that, already in the absence of sources, an effective scalar field arises through foliating and spatially averaging inhomogeneous geometrical curvature invariants of the…
We propose a new class of natural inflation models based on a hidden scale invariance. In a very generic Wilsonian effective field theory with an arbitrary number of scalar fields, which exhibits scale invariance via the dilaton, the…
The slow-roll approximation to inflation is ultimately justified by the presence of inflationary attractors for the orbits of the solutions of the dynamical equations in phase space. There are many indications that the inflaton field…
We generalize the effective potential to scalar field configurations which are proportional to the Hubble parameter of a homogeneous and isotropic background geometry. This may be useful in situations for which curvature effects are…
We obtain effective equations of inflationary dynamics for the mean inflaton and metric fields in the no-boundary and tunneling quantum states of the Universe. In the slow roll approximation (taking the form of the local Schwiger-DeWitt…
In this work we explore the effects that a possible primordial magnetic field can have on the inflaton effective potential, taking as the underlying model a warm inflation scenario, based on global supersymmetry with a new-inflation-type…
The inflaton field is assumed to possess electric charge. The effect of the charge upon inflation is studied using a parameter \omega_0 that acts as a measure of the quantity of inflaton present. It is shown that at the end of inflation the…
The effective approach is applied to the analysis of inflationary magnetogenesis. Rather than assuming a particular underlying description, all the generally covariant terms potentially appearing with four space-time derivatives in the…
The inflaton field responsible for inflation may not be a canonical fundamental scalar. It is possible that the inflaton is a composite of fermions or it may have a decay width. In these cases the standard procedure for calculating the…
We revisit models of natural inflation and show that the single-field effective theory described by the potential $V(a)\sim \cos\frac{a}{f}$ breaks down as the inflaton $a$ makes large-field excursions, even for values of $f$ smaller than…
Slow-roll inflation can be studied as an effective field theory. The form of the inflaton potential consistent with the data is V(phi) = N M^4 w(phi/[sqrt{N} M_{Pl}]) where phi is the inflaton field, M is the inflation energy scale, and N ~…
The dilaton is a possible inflaton candidate following recent CMB data allowing a non-minimal coupling to the Ricci curvature scalar in the early Universe. In this paper, we introduce an approach that has seldom been used in the literature,…
We show that a minimal extension of the Standard Model including a new complex scalar field can explain inflation and the observed effective number of neutrinos. The real part of the singlet plays the role of the inflaton field, while the…