Related papers: Large and small field inflation from hyperbolic si…
This thesis presents a possible inflation scenario as a consequence of non-minimal gravitational couplings in the Conformal Standard Model. That model consists, in comparison to the SM, of additional right-chiral neutrinos and a complex…
The current challenges in High Energy Physics and Cosmology are to build coherent particle physics models to describe the phenomenology at colliders in the laboratory and the observations in the universe. From these observations, the…
The Higgs field is an attractive candidate for the inflaton because it is an observationally confirmed fundamental scalar field. Importantly, it can be modeled by the most general renormalizable scalar potential. However, if the classical…
We discuss inflation in models with large extra dimensions, driven by a bulk scalar field. The brane inflaton is then a single effective field, obtained from the bulk scalar field by scaling. The self interaction terms of the effective…
The viability of a given model for inflation is determined not only by the form of the inflaton potential, but also by the initial inflaton field configuration. In many models, field configurations which are otherwise well-motivated…
Motivated by the recent `Higgs-inflation' scenario based on a single inflaton field, we consider more generic two-field inflation with non-minimal coupling term. The generic analytic expressions are derived for cosmological observables with…
In the phase space perspective, scalar field slow roll inflation is described by a heteroclinic orbit from a saddle type fixed point to a final attractive point. In many models the saddle point resides in the scalar field asymptotics, and…
We embed the supersymmetric standard model of hybrid inflation based on the next-to-minimal superpotential term $\lambda NH_uH_d$ supplemented by an inflaton term $\kappa \phi N^2$, into an extra-dimensional framework, in which all the…
It is commonly believed that a successful period of inflation driven by a single or several scalar fields requires a specific hierarchy of masses given by $M_{inf}\ll H \ll M_{heavy}$, where $M_{inf}$ can correspond to several or a single…
We consider "new inflation" inflationary models at small fields, embedded in minimal ${\cal N}=1$ supergravity with a single chiral superfield. Imposing a period of inflation compatible with experiment severely restricts possible models,…
I study two-stage hybrid inflation driven by moduli fields, corresponding to flat directions of supersymmetry, lifted by supergravity corrections. The first stage corresponds to a period of either fast-roll or `locked' inflation, induced by…
We consider inflation driven near a saddle point in a higher dimensional field space, which is the most likely type of slow roll inflation on the string theoretical landscape; anthropic arguments need to be invoked in order to find a…
For simple inflationary models, we provide a consistent and complete scheme by which the macro-physical details of early universe inflation may be determined explicitly from the underlying micro-physical theory. We examine inflationary…
Within General Relativity, a minimally coupled scalar field governed by a quadratic potential is able to produce an accelerated expansion of the universe provided its value and excursion are larger than the Planck scale. This is an…
Loops of inflationary gravitons are known to induce large temporal and spatial logarithms which can cause perturbation theory to break down. Nonlinear sigma models possess the same kind of derivative interactions and induce the same sorts…
Hyperbolic inflation is an extension of the slow-roll inflation in multi-field models. We extend hyperbolic inflation by adding a gauge field and find four-type attractor solutions: slow-roll inflation, hyperbolic inflation, anisotropic…
We revisit two-field hybrid inflation as an effective field theory for low-scale inflation with sub-Planckian scalar field ranges. We focus on a prototype model by Stewart because it allows for a red spectral tilt, which still fits the…
We review the main aspects of the warm inflation scenario, focusing on the inflationary dynamics and the predictions related to the primordial spectrum of perturbations, to be compared with the recent cosmological observations. We study in…
We continue developing cosmological models involving nilpotent chiral superfields, which provide a simple unified description of inflation and the current acceleration of the universe in the supergravity context. We describe here a general…
We introduce a frame-covariant formalism for inflation of scalar-curvature theories by adopting a differential geometric approach which treats the scalar fields as coordinates living on a field-space manifold. This ensures that our…