Related papers: Observing Invisible Axions with Gravitational Wave…
Pre--big bang models of inflation based on string cosmology produce a stochastic gravitational wave background whose spectrum grows with decreasing wavelength, and which may be detectable using interferometers such as LIGO. We point out…
We discuss the possibility of a feature in the spectrum of inflationary gravitational waves sourced by a scalar field $\chi$ whose vacuum fluctuations are amplified by a rapidly time dependent mass. Unlike previous work which has focused on…
We simultaneously study gravitational waves (GWs) and free axions emitted from axionic string-wall networks in the early universe using advanced 3D lattice simulations. Our simulations start before the Peccei-Quinn phase transition and end…
We study a realization of the inflationary scenario where the Peccei-Quinn (PQ) symmetry is spontaneously broken during inflation, facilitated by its non-minimal coupling to gravity. This results in effectively two-field inflation: the…
We compare conventional non-minimally coupled Peccei-Quinn (PQ) inflation with a version of the model in which unitarity conservation is imposed by additional Jordan frame interactions. Assuming instantaneous reheating, the…
Composite axions offer a scenario where the axion emerges as a pion-like state, avoiding fine-tuning of elementary scalars and ameliorating the axion quality problem. Despite these advantages, their post-inflationary cosmology remains…
The original axion natural inflation model predicts a tensor-to-scalar ratio exceeding experimental limits. Conversely, in aligned axion inflation, inflation can proceed along trajectories emerging from near a saddle point of the two-field…
Oscillations in the frequency profile of the stochastic gravitational wave background are a characteristic prediction of small-scale features during inflation. In this paper we present a first investigation of the detection prospects of…
In string theory inspired models of axion-like fields, sub-leading non-perturbative effects, if sufficiently large, can introduce steep cliffs and gentle plateaus onto the underlying scalar potential. During inflation, the motion of a…
We propose a consistent framework with the $U(1)$ Peccei-Quinn (PQ) symmetry for obtaining the initial condition for axion kinetic misalignment from inflation. We introduce a PQ complex scalar field and an extra Higgs doublet, which are…
We survey observational constraints on the parameter space of inflation and axions and map out two allowed windows: the classic window and the inflationary anthropic window. The cosmology of the latter is particularly interesting;…
Due to the universality of gravitational interactions, it is generally expected that a stochastic gravitational wave (GW) background could form during the reheating period when the inflaton perturbatively decays with the emission of…
The longitudinal components of massive vector fields generated during inflation constitute a well-motivated dark matter candidate, with interesting phenomenological implications. During the epoch of radiation domination following inflation,…
We study minimal versions of Higgs inflation in the presence of a massless QCD axion. While the inflationary energy scale of the metric variant is too high to accommodate isocurvature bounds, it was argued that Palatini Higgs inflation…
We show how observations of the density perturbation (scalar) spectrum and the gravitational wave (tensor) spectrum allow a reconstruction of the potential responsible for cosmological inflation. A complete functional reconstruction or a…
The Peccei-Quinn mechanism suffers from the problem of the isocurvature perturbations. The isocurvature perturbations are suppressed if the Peccei-Quinn breaking scale is large during inflation. The oscillation of the Peccei-Quinn breaking…
The QCD axion can successfully solve the strong CP problem under the condition that the Peccei-Quinn symmetry is respected to extremely high standard. We explore a class of gauge theories that accommodate a high-quality axion, known as the…
We demonstrate that gravitational waves generated by efficient gauge preheating after axion inflation generically contribute significantly to the effective number of relativistic degrees of freedom $N_\mathrm{eff}$. We show that, with…
When cosmic strings are formed during inflation, they regrow to reach a scaling regime, leaving distinct imprints on the stochastic gravitational wave background (SGWB). Such signatures, associated with specific primordial features, can be…
Recent study [1] has suggested that warm inflation may be realized with a minimal extension of the Standard Model by a single scalar inflaton field with an axion-like coupling to gluons. Motivated by this framework, we investigate the…