Related papers: Predictions for Quantum Gravitational Signatures f…
Cosmic Inflation provides an attractive framework for understanding the early universe and the cosmic microwave background. It can readily involve energies close to the scale at which Quantum Gravity effects become important. General…
We present the first attempt to use a combination of CMB, LIGO, and PPTA data to constrain both the tilt and the running of primordial tensor power spectrum through constraints on the gravitational wave energy density generated in the early…
A fundamental prediction of inflation is a nearly scale-invariant spectrum of gravitational wave. The features of such a signal provide extremely important information about the physics of the early universe. In this paper, we focus on…
Inflation generates gravitational waves, which may be observable in the low multipoles of the cosmic microwave background (cmb) anisotropy but only if the inflaton field variation is at least of order the Planck scale. Such a large…
We use a numerical code to compute the density perturbations generated during an inflationary epoch which includes a spontaneous symmetry breaking phase transition. A sharp step in the inflaton potential generates $k$ dependent oscillations…
We study the production of gravitational waves from primordial scalar perturbations in double-inflection-point inflation, in which one of the inflection points predicts the power spectra consistent with CMB observations at large scales and…
We calculate power spectra of cosmological perturbations at high accuracy for two classes of inflation models. We classify the models according to the behaviour of the Hubble distance during inflation. Our approximation works if the Hubble…
The leading quantum correction to the power spectrum of a gravitationally-coupled light scalar field is calculated, assuming that it is generated during a phase of single-field, slow-roll inflation.
Primordial quantum fluctuations produced by inflation are conventionally assumed to be statistically homogeneous, a consequence of translational invariance. In this paper we quantify the potentially observable effects of a small violation…
The production of a stochastic background of gravitational waves is a fundamental prediction of any cosmological inflationary model. The features of such a signal encode unique information about the physics of the Early Universe and beyond,…
Attempts at building an unified description of the strong, weak and electromagnetic interactions usually involve several stages of spontaneous symmetry breaking. We consider the effects of such symmetry breaking during an era of primordial…
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…
Inflation provides a unified paradigm for understanding the isotropy of the cosmic microwave background (CMB), the flatness problem, and the origin of large-scale structure. Although the physics responsible for inflation is not yet well…
In loop quantum cosmology, the universe avoids a big bang singularity and undergoes an early and short super-inflation phase. During super-inflation, non-perturbative quantum corrections to the dynamics drive an inflaton field up its…
We derive the power spectrum of primordial quantum fluctuations in an inflationary universe for curvature parameter ${\mathcal K}=1$. This is achieved through a Born--Oppenheimer type of approximation scheme from the Wheeler--DeWitt…
The formalism of stochastic inflation is a powerful tool for analyzing the backreaction of cosmological perturbations, and making precise predictions for inflationary observables. We demonstrate this with the simple $m^2\phi^2$ model of…
We present the first computation of the cosmological perturbations generated during inflation up to second order in deviations from the homogeneous background solution. Our results, which fully account for the inflaton self-interactions as…
The inflationary paradigm is an important cornerstone of the concordance cosmological model. However, standard inflation cannot fully address the transition from an early homogeneous and isotropic stage, to another one lacking such…
In this paper we consider inflation as a probe of new physics near the string or Planck scale. We discuss how new physics can be captured by the choice of vacuum, and how this leads to modifications of the primordial spectrum as well as the…
We show that inflationary cosmology may be used to test the statistical predictions of quantum theory at very short distances and at very early times. Hidden-variables theories, such as the pilot-wave theory of de Broglie and Bohm, allow…