Related papers: Inflaton Effective Potential from Photons for Gene…
We elucidate the counting of the relevant small parameters in inflationary perturbation theory. Doing this allows for an explicit delineation of the domain of validity of the semi-classical approximation to gravity used in the calculation…
We calculate the one-loop corrections from inflationary gravitons to the electromagnetic fields of a point charge and a point magnetic dipole on a locally de Sitter space background. Results are obtained both for an observer at rest in…
We stochastically formulate the theory of scalar quantum electrodynamics on a de Sitter background. This reproduces the leading infrared logarithms at each loop order. It also allows one to sum the series of leading infrared logarithms to…
In this paper, we explore the inflationary dynamics of the $\beta$-exponential potential model, where a scalar field couples to quadratic $(R + R^2)$ gravity. In this model, the inflaton is the field that determines the size of the extra…
We show that initial conditions for small-field inflation can be determined quantum mechanically by introducing a suitable flattened region in the scalar potential. The inflaton is then driven towards the slow-roll attractor solution…
Many different models of inflation give rise to the same effective field theory of the inflaton. While effective field theories in flat space provide little information about UV physics, we propose that in inflationary backgrounds a large…
We present an effective model where the inflaton is a relaxion that scans the Higgs mass and sets it at the weak scale. The dynamics consist of a long epoch in which inflation is due to the shallow slope of the potential, followed by a few…
Oscillons are massive, long-lived, localized excitations of a scalar field. We show that in a large class of well-motivated single-field models, inflation is followed by self-resonance, leading to copious oscillon generation and a lengthy…
We discuss the latest constraints on a Taylor-expanded scalar inflaton potential, obtained focusing on its observable part only. This is in contrast with other works in which an extrapolation of the potential is applied using the slow-roll…
We consider vacuum polarization from massless scalar electrodynamics in de Sitter inflation. The theory exhibits a 3+1 dimensional analogue of the Schwinger mechanism in which a photon mass is dynamically generated. The mechanism is generic…
We calculate the one-loop vacuum polarization tensor of scalar electrodynamics in a locally de Sitter space-time, endowed with a nearly minimally coupled, light scalar field. We show that the photon dynamics is well approximated by a…
We use the power-counting formalism of effective field theory to study the size of loop corrections in theories of slow-roll inflation, with the aim of more precisely identifying the limits of validity of the usual classical inflationary…
Cosmological $\alpha$-attractors are observationally favored due to the asymptotic flatness of the potential. Since its flatness induces the negative pressure even after inflation, the coherent oscillation of the inflaton field could…
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…
When energy is not conserved, imprints of new physics on observable cosmology might not follow the rules of local effective actions. By capturing dissipative and diffusive effects, open effective field theories account for the possibly…
We propose a possibility that the inflaton potential is significantly modified after inflation due to heavy field dynamics. During inflation there may be a heavy scalar field stabilized at a value deviated from the low-energy minimum. As…
We show that warm inflation can be successfully realized in the high temperature regime through dissipative interactions between the inflaton and a single fermionic degree of freedom, provided that the latter's mass is an oscillatory…
This is a version of the author's Ph.D. thesis. The methods of effective field theory are used to study generic theories of inflation with a single inflaton field and to perform a general analysis of the associated non-Gaussianities. We…
We consider a generic class of the so-called inflationary $-\alpha$ attractor models and compute the cosmological observables in the Einstein and Jordan frames, of the corresponding $F(R)-$gravity theory. We find that the two sets coincide…
We find multi-scalar effective field theories (EFTs) that can achieve a slow inflationary roll despite having a scalar potential that does not satisfy the usual slow-roll condition (d V)^2 << V^2/Mp^2. They evade the usual slow-roll…