Related papers: $\mathcal{R}^2$ Quantum Corrected Scalar Field Inf…
We derive the first quantum gravitational corrections to the inflationary power spectra for a general single-field scalar-tensor theory which includes a non-minimal coupling to gravity, a non-standard scalar kinetic term and an arbitrary…
During inflation explicit perturbative computations of quantum field theories which contain massless, non-conformal fields exhibit secular effects that grow as powers of the logarithm of the inflationary scale factor. Starobinski\u{\i}'s…
I investigate multi-field inflationary models with fields that decay during inflation, leading to staggered inflation. This feature is natural in many models motivated by string theory, for instance if inflatons are related to interbrane…
We study a scalar field with non-minimal kinetic coupling to itself and to the curvature. The slow rolling conditions allowing an inflationary background have been found. The quadratic and Higgs type potentials have been considered, and the…
Slow-roll inflation can be studied as an effective field theory. The form of the inflaton potential consistent with the data is V(phi) = N M^4 w(phi/[sqrt{N} M_{Pl}]) where phi is the inflaton field, M is the inflation energy scale, and N ~…
In spite of its great phenomenological success, current models of scalar field-driven inflation suffer from important unresolved conceptual issues. New fundamental physics will be required to address these questions. String theory is a…
Inflationary era of our Universe can be characterized as semi-classical because it can be described in the context of four-dimensional Einsteins's gravity involving quantum corrections. These string motivated corrections originate from…
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 develop a numerical statistical method to study linear cosmological fluctuations in inflationary scenarios with multiple fields, and apply it to an ensemble of six-field inflection point models in string theory. The latter are concrete…
It has recently been suggested that a strongly coupled phase of inflation may be described holographically in terms of a weakly coupled quantum field theory (QFT). Here, we explore the possibility that the wave function of an inflationary…
The calculation of scalar gravitational and matter perturbations during multiple-field inflation valid to first order in slow roll is discussed. These fields may be the coordinates of a non-trivial field manifold and hence have non-minimal…
We extend the theory of cosmological perturbations to the case when the ``matter'' Lagrangian is an arbitrary function of the scalar field and its first derivatives. In particular, this extension provides a unified description of known…
Following the 2015 Planck release, we briefly comment on the status and some ongoing opportunities in the interface between inflationary cosmology, string theory, and CMB data. The constraints in the $r$-$n_s$ plane introduce a new…
During inflation explicit perturbative computations of quantum field theories which contain massless, non-conformal fields exhibit secular effects that grow as powers of the logarithm of the inflationary scale factor. Starobinskii's…
The inflationary paradigm provides a robust description of the peculiar initial conditions which are required for the success of the Hot Big Bang model of cosmology, as well as of the recent precision measurements of temperature…
We study the effective field theory of inflation, i.e. the most general theory describing the fluctuations around a quasi de Sitter background, in the case of single field models. The scalar mode can be eaten by the metric by going to…
Computations of quantum corrections to the CMB spectrum and to scalar field dynamics during inflation very often take advantage of the "semi-classical" approach, where the metric fluctuations are simply omitted. On the other hand, a…
In this work we shall study $k$-inflation theories with non-minimal coupling of the scalar field to gravity, in the presence of only a higher order kinetic term of the form $\sim \mathrm{const}\times X^{\mu}$, with…
After a brief review of the different approaches to predict the possible quantum gravity corrections to quantum field theory, we discuss in some detail the formulation based on a Gaussian reference frame fixing. Then, we implement this…
The methods of effective field theory are used to study generic theories of inflation with a single inflaton field. For scalar modes, the leading corrections to the ${\cal R}$ correlation function are found to be purely of the $k$-inflation…