Related papers: The Inflationary Wavefunction from Analyticity and…
Our understanding of quantum field theory rests largely on explicit and controlled calculations in perturbation theory. Because of this, much recent effort has been devoted to improve our grasp of perturbative techniques on cosmological…
In the framework of superstring compactifications with N=1 supersymmetry spontaneously broken, (by either geometrical fluxes, branes or else), we show the existence of new inflationary solutions. The time-trajectory of the scale factor of…
The analyticity of response functions and scattering amplitudes implies powerful relations between low-energy observables and the underlying short-distance dynamics. These 'IR/UV' relations are rooted in basic physical principles, such as…
We analyze the signatures of inflationary models that are coupled to strongly interacting field theories, a basic class of multifield models also motivated by their role in providing dynamically small scales. Near the squeezed limit of the…
Non-trivial inflaton self-interactions can yield calculable signatures of primordial non-Gaussianity that are measurable in cosmic surveys. Surprisingly, we find that the phase transition to slow-roll eternal inflation is often incalculable…
We investigate the principles of quantum field theory using a stiff de Sitter space. We demonstrate that a non-unitary Lagrangian on a Euclidean AdS geometry can produce the perturbative expansion of late-time correlation functions to all…
We study the phenomenon of discrete symmetry breaking during the inflationary epoch, using a model-independent approach based on the effective field theory of inflation. We work in a context where both time reparameterization symmetry and…
We investigate the symmetry structure of inflation in 2+1 dimensions. In particular, we show that the asymptotic symmetries of three-dimensional de Sitter space are in one-to-one correspondence with cosmological adiabatic modes for the…
Using the dS/QFT correspondence in the context of inflation allows for the study of interesting, otherwise inaccessible physics. In particular, by studying inflation via its dual field theory at the boundary of the de Sitter space, it may…
Non-linear interactions during inflation generate non-Gaussianities in the distribution of primordial curvature. In many theories, the physics is scale-invariant, such that the induced three-point function depends solely on a dimensionless…
Inflation correlators with one-loop massive exchange encode rich information about the dynamics of the massive loop particles. Their nonanalytic behavior in certain soft limits leads to characteristic oscillatory pattern, which is the…
We apply the Effective Field Theory of Inflation to study the case where the continuous shift symmetry of the Goldstone boson \pi is softly broken to a discrete subgroup. This case includes and generalizes recently proposed String Theory…
We use holographic techniques to compute inflationary non-Gaussianities for general single-field inflation, including models with a non-trivial sound speed. In this holographic approach, the inflationary dynamics is captured by a relevant…
Effective field theories (EFTs) provide a powerful framework to parametrise unknown aspects of possible ultraviolet (UV) physics. For scalar fields in de Sitter space, however, new emergent phenomena can arise when the cut-off scale of the…
Many statistics available to constrain non-Gaussianity from inflation are simplest to use under the assumption that the curvature correlation functions are hierarchical. That is, if the n-point function is proportional to the (n-1) power of…
Using an effective field theory approach to inflation, we examine novel properties of the spectrum of inflationary tensor fluctuations, that arise when breaking some of the symmetries or requirements usually imposed on the dynamics of…
Speed matters. How the masses and spins of new particles active during inflation can be read off from the statistical properties of primordial density fluctuations is well understood. However, not when the propagation speeds of the new…
A pressing problem in comparing inflationary models with observation is the accurate calculation of correlation functions. One approach is to evolve them using ordinary differential equations ("transport equations"), analogous to the…
During inflation, the geometry of spacetime is described by a (quasi-)de Sitter phase. Inflationary observables are determined by the underlying (softly broken) de Sitter isometry group SO(1, 4) which acts like a conformal group on R^3:…
The particle model building of cosmological collider physics often involves boost-breaking bilinear mixing between a heavy particle and the nearly massless inflaton mode. In cosmological correlators, such a mixing is obtained by taking a…