Related papers: Missing Scalars at the Cosmological Collider
I show that cosmological perturbation spectra produced from quantum fluctuations in massless or self-interacting scalar fields during an inflationary era remain invariant under a two parameter family of transformations of the homogeneous…
Adiabatic (curvature) perturbations are produced during a period of cosmological inflation that is driven by a single scalar field, the inflaton. On particle physics grounds -- though -- it is natural to expect that this scalar field is…
Scalar fields are ubiquitous in theories of high-energy physics. In the context of cosmic inflation, this suggests the existence of spectator fields, which provide a subdominant source of energy density. We show that spectator fields boost…
In the context of loop quantum cosmology, we consider an inflationary era driven by a canonical scalar field and occurring in the semiclassical regime, where spacetime is a continuum but quantum gravitational effects are important. The…
We model the formation, evolution and astrophysical effects of dark compact Scalar Miniclusters (``ScaMs''). These objects arise when a scalar field, with an axion-like or Higgs-like potential, undergoes a second order phase transition…
The inflationary universe can be viewed as a "Cosmological Collider" with energy of Hubble scale, producing very massive particles and recording their characteristic signals in primordial non-Gaussianities. To utilize this collider to…
Features in the inflationary landscape can inject extra energies to inflation models and produce on-shell particles with masses much larger than the Hubble scale of inflation. This possibility extends the energy reach of the program of…
We study the correction to the scale invariant power spectrum of a scalar field on de Sitter space from small black holes that formed during a pre-inflationary matter dominated era. The formation probability of such black holes is estimated…
The existence and detection of scalar fields could provide solutions to long-standing puzzles about the nature of dark matter, the dark compact objects at the centre of most galaxies, and other phenomena. Yet, self-interacting scalar fields…
We investigate the possible effect of cosmological-constant type dark energy during the inflation period of the early universe. This is accommodated by a new dispersion relation in de Sitter space. The modified inflation model of a…
It is conjectured that inflation, taking account of quantum gravity, leads to a discrete spectrum of cosmological perturbations, instead of the continuous Gaussian spectrum predicted by standard field theory in an unquantized background.…
It is generally expected that heavy fields are present during inflation, which can leave their imprint in late-time cosmological observables. The main signature of these fields is a small amount of distinctly shaped non-Gaussianity, which…
In this paper we will discuss analytically the perturbations created from a slowly rolling subdominant spectator field which decays much before the end of inflation. The quantum fluctuations of such a spectator field can seed perturbations…
We consider scalar perturbations of energy--density for a class of cosmological models where an early phase of accelerated expansion evolves, without any fine--tuning for graceful exit, towards the standard Friedman eras of observed…
The motion of a pseudo-scalar field $X$ during inflation naturally induces a significant amplification of the gauge fields to which it is coupled. The amplified gauge fields can source characteristic scalar and tensor primordial…
It is well known that light scalar fields present during inflation are coherently excited. We show that if the field couples to gravity in a non-minimal way, the fluctuations at large scales are suppressed with respect to the small scales…
We study effects of multiple scalar fields (scalar isocurvatons) with the Hubble scale masses on the inflationary bispectrum in the squeezed limit, particular paying attention to the question how to disentangle mass spectra of such fields.…
It has recently been realized that many theories of physics beyond the Standard Model give rise to cosmological histories exhibiting extended epochs of cosmological stasis. During such epochs, the abundances of different energy components…
Massive fields can imprint unique oscillatory features on primordial correlation functions or inflationary correlators, which is dubbed the cosmological collider signal. In this work, we analytically investigate the effects of a…
Forthcoming missions probing the absolute intensity of the CMB are expected to be able to measure spectral distortions, which are deviations from its blackbody distribution. As cosmic inflation can induce spectral distortions, these…