Related papers: CMB constraints on monodromy inflation at strong c…
We place observational likelihood constraints on braneworld and non-commutative inflation for a number of inflaton potentials, using Planck, WMAP polarization and BAO data. Both braneworld and non-commutative scenarios of the kind…
The effective approach is applied to the analysis of inflationary magnetogenesis. Rather than assuming a particular underlying description, all the generally covariant terms potentially appearing with four space-time derivatives in the…
We consider a double-inflationary model with two massive scalar fields interacting only gravitationally in the context of a flat cold dark matter (CDM) Universe. The cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature anisotropies produced in…
We constrain the spectrum of primordial curvature perturbations by using recent Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) and Large Scale Structure (LSS) data. Specifically, we consider CMB data from the COBE, Boomerang and Maxima experiments, the…
We present constraints on canonical single-field inflation derived from WMAP five year, ACBAR, QUAD, BICEP data combined with the halo power spectrum from SDSS LRG7. Models with a non-scale-invariant spectrum and a red tilt n_s < 1 are now…
We study a model of inflation based on $\mathcal{N}=1$ supergravity essentially depending on one effective parameter. Under a field transformation we show that this model turns out to be equivalent to a previously studied supergravity model…
In this paper we use two methods to constrain the the canonical single-field slow-roll inflation model. The first method exploits the analytic slow-roll-parameter dependence of primordial perturbations, and the second consists of a…
During single clock inflation, hidden fields (i.e. fields coupled to the inflaton only gravitationally) in their adiabatic vacua can ordinarily only affect observables through virtual effects. After renormalizing background quantities…
Models of large-field inflation based on axion-like fields with shift symmetries can be simple and natural, and make a promising prediction of detectable primordial gravitational waves. The Weak Gravity Conjecture is known to constrain the…
Measuring spectral distortions (SDs) of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) will provide new constraints on previously unexplored scales of the primordial power spectrum, allowing us to extend the probed parameter space by several orders…
We present a general framework where the effective field theory of single field inflation is extended by the inclusion of operators with mass dimension 3 and 4 in the unitary gauge. These higher dimensional operators introduce quartic and…
We study in detail a new model of quintessential inflation where the inflaton field is coupled to the Gauss-Bonnet term. This coupling ensures that the variation of the field is kept sub-Planckian, which avoids the 5th force problem as well…
We derive power spectra of the scalar- and tensor-type structures generated in an inflation model based on a massive non-minimally coupled scalar field with the strong coupling assumption. We make analyses in both the original-frame and the…
We investigate the possible influence of very-high-energy physics on inflationary predictions focussing on whether effective field theories can allow effects which are parametrically larger than order H^2/M^2, where M is the scale of heavy…
Models of axion inflation are particularly interesting since they provide a natural justification for the flatness of the potential over a super-Planckian distance, namely the approximate shift-symmetry of the inflaton. In addition, most of…
Cosmological Coleman-Weinberg potentials are induced when normal matter is coupled to the inflaton. It has long been known that the corrections from bosonic fields are positive whereas those from fermionic fields are negative. In flat space…
We focus on the massive gauge theory formulation of axion monodromy inflation. We argue that a gauge symmetry hidden in these models is the key protection mechanism from dangerous corrections from both field theory and gravitational…
The recently released BICEP2 data detected the primordial B-mode polarization in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) map which strongly supports for a large tensor-to-scalar ratio, and thus, is found to be in tension with the Planck…
In this article, we review how strong dynamics can be efficiently employed as a viable alternative to study the mechanism of cosmic inflation. We examine single-field inflation in which the inflaton emerges as a bound state stemming from…
The weak gravity conjecture imposes severe constraints on natural inflation. A trans-Planckian axion decay constant can only be realized if the potential exhibits an additional (subdominant) modulation with sub-Planckian periodicity. The…