Related papers: The Inflationary Wavefunction from Analyticity and…
We study quantum field theory on a de Sitter spacetime dS$_{d+1}$ background. Our main tool is the Hilbert space decomposition in irreducible unitary representations of its isometry group $SO(d+1,1)$. As the first application of the Hilbert…
In DBI inflation the cubic action is a particular linear combination of the two, otherwise independent, cubic operators \dot \pi^3 and \dot \pi (\partial_i \pi)^2. We show that in the Effective Field Theory (EFT) of inflation this is a…
We investigate DBI inflation using $N$ multiple branes and show how the configuration is equivalent to a single wrapped $D5$-brane with flux. We then show how 1/N corrections can be implemented, and we examine the sound speed and levels of…
The inflationary mechanism of mode amplification predicts that the state of each mode with a given wave vector is correlated to that of its partner mode with the opposite vector. This implies nonlocal correlations which leave their imprint…
We propose the unified models of cosmological inflation, spontaneous SUSY breaking, and the dark energy (de Sitter vacuum) in $N=1$ supergravity with the dilaton-axion chiral superfield $T$ in the presence of an $N=1$ vector multiplet with…
The predictions of inflation are usually defined in terms of equal time in-in correlation functions in an accelerating cosmological background. These same observables exist for quantum field theory in other spacetimes, including flat space.…
An analysis is given of inflation based on a supersymmetric Dirac-Born-Infeld (DBI) action in an axionic landscape. The DBI model we discuss involves a landscape of chiral superfields with one $U(1)$ shift symmetry which is broken by…
We study finite-coupling effects of QFT on a rigid de Sitter (dS) background taking the $O(N)$ vector model at large $N$ as a solvable example. Extending standard large $N$ techniques to the dS background, we analyze the phase structure and…
In this thesis we will primarily demonstrate how additional scalar degrees of freedom - which are motivated from many high-energy embeddings - open up new observational windows onto the physics of inflation. We construct a Bayesian…
According to the dS/CFT correspondence, correlators of fields generated during a primordial de Sitter phase are constrained by three-dimensional conformal invariance. Using the properties of radially quantized conformal field theories and…
Models of inflationary cosmology based on spontaneous symmetry breaking typically suffer from the shortcoming that the symmetry breaking scale is driven to nearly the Planck scale by observational constraints. In this paper we investigate…
We study a statistical model defined by a conformally invariant distribution of overlapping spheres in arbitrary dimension d. The model arises as the asymptotic distribution of cosmic bubbles in d+1 dimensional de Sitter space, and also as…
Nonintegrable systems thermalize, leading to the emergence of fluctuating hydrodynamics. Typically, this hydrodynamics is diffusive. We use the effective field theory (EFT) of diffusion to compute higher-point functions of conserved…
Until recently our knowledge of the primordial curvature perturbation was relatively modest. Ever since COBE delivered its map of data we know the scalar spectrum of primordial perturbations is approximately flat, with the power being only…
We propose a new type of wavefunction for the universe computed from the Euclidean path integral, with asymptotically $AdS$ boundary conditions. In the semiclassical limit, it describes a Euclidean (half)-wormhole geometry, exhibiting a…
We apply the soft-collinear effective theory (SCET) to deep inelastic scattering near the endpoint region. The forward scattering amplitude, and the structure functions are shown to factorize as a convolution of the Wilson coefficients, the…
We develop a systematic unitarity method for loop-level AdS scattering amplitudes, dual to non-planar CFT correlators, from both bulk and boundary perspectives. We identify cut operators acting on bulk amplitudes that put virtual lines on…
We study the cosmology of a recent model of supersymmetry breaking, in the presence of a tuneable positive cosmological constant, based on a gauged shift symmetry of a string modulus that can be identified with the string dilaton. The…
We develop a stochastic approach to a non de Sitter Universe in a gauge-invariant way and obtain a system of Langevin-type equations which may be considered to be renormalization group equations for the long wave parts of the scalar fields…
The primordial four-point function encodes a wealth of information about the inflationary Universe. Despite extensive theoretical work, most models of four-point physics have never been compared to data. In this series, we conduct a…