Related papers: Stochastic approach to gravitational waves from in…
I discuss the current status of inflationary cosmology in light of the recent WMAP 3-year data release. The basic predictions of inflation are all supported by the data. Inflation also makes predictions which have not been well tested by…
The magnitude of B-mode polarization in the cosmic microwave background as measured by BICEP2 favours models of chaotic inflation with a quadratic $m^2 \phi^2/2$ potential, whereas data from the Planck satellite favour a small value of the…
We study how inflationary observables associated with primordial tensor modes are affected by coupling the minimal field content with an extra spin-2 particle during inflation. We work with a model that is ghost-free at the fully non-linear…
The reheating of the universe after hybrid inflation proceeds through the nucleation and subsequent collision of large concentrations of energy density in the form of bubble-like structures moving at relativistic speeds. This generates a…
We study the dynamics of inflation in a generalized scalar-torsion gravity scenario by assuming a canonical scalar field non-minimally coupled to torsion with a Galileon-type self-interaction. After obtaining the field equations for a flat…
Massive bigravity, a theoretically consistent modification of general relativity with an additional dynamical rank two tensor, successfully describes the observed accelerated expansion of the Universe without a cosmological constant. Recent…
We study a model of inflation where the scalar perturbations are almost gaussian while there is sizable (equilateral) nongaussianity in the tensor sector. In this model, a rolling pseudoscalar gravitationally coupled to the inflaton…
Numerical simulations of the inflationary dynamics are presented here for a single canonical scalar field minimally coupled to gravity. We spell out the basic equations governing the inflationary dynamics in terms of cosmic time $t$ and…
We investigate the possibility that nonlinear gravitational effects influence the preheating era after inflation. Our work is based on numerical solutions of the inhomogeneous Einstein field equations, and is free of perturbative…
Primordial non-Gaussianities of the scalar(tensor)-tensor-tensor type supporting a non-trivial squeezed component are known to induce anisotropies in the stochastic gravitational wave background. We derive the explicit form of such…
We consider the space-condensate inflation model to study the primordial gravitational waves generated in the early Universe. We calculate the energy spectrum of gravitational waves induced by the space-condensate inflation model for full…
Observations of the cosmic microwave background do not yet determine whether inflation was driven by a slowly-rolling scalar field or involved another physical mechanism. In this paper we discuss the prospects of using the power spectra of…
We investigate the entropy dynamics of de Sitter spacetime during the inflationary phase. The cosmological horizon in de Sitter spacetime, which limits the causally accessible region for an observer, exhibits thermal properties similar to a…
We study the generation of primordial perturbations in a (single-field) slow-roll inflationary universe. In momentum space, these (Gaussian) perturbations are characterized by a zero mean and a non-zero variance $\Delta^2(k, t)$. However,…
Based on the conventional metric tensor and driven by a nearly constant energy density, cosmic inflation, characterized by a remarkably accelerated expansion, was proposed as an early epoch in the Universe. The energy density is typically…
We develop a theory of nonlinear cosmological perturbations on superhorizon scales where a characteristic length scale of perturbations is longer than the Hubble radius, in general theoretical frameworks. Our formalism is based on the…
We consider the possibility of extra spinning particles during inflation, focussing on the spin-2 case. Our analysis relies on the well-known fully non-linear formulation of interacting spin-2 theories. We explore the parameter space of the…
We consider the quasi-de Sitter geometry of the inflationary universe. We calculate the energy flux of the slowly rolling background scalar field through the quasi-de Sitter apparent horizon and set it equal to the change of the entropy…
The generation of gravitational waves during inflation due to the non-linear coupling of scalar and tensor modes is discussed. Two methods describing gravitational wave perturbations are used and compared: a covariant and local approach, as…
We propose a new mechanism to generate density perturbations in inflationary models. Spatial fluctuations in the decay rate of the inflaton field to ordinary matter lead to fluctuations in the reheating temperature. We argue that in most…