Related papers: Galileon inflation evades the no-go for PBH format…
[Abridged] The primordial scalar power spectrum is well constrained on large scales, primarily by the observations of the anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background (CMB). Over the last few years, it has been recognized that a sharp…
An attractive candidate for the inflaton is an axion slowly rolling down a flat potential protected by a perturbative shift symmetry. Realisations of this idea within large field, natural and monomial inflation have been disfavoured by…
There are many inflationary models in which inflaton field does not satisfy the slow-roll condition. However, in such models, it is always difficult to generate the curvature perturbation during inflation. Thus, to generate the curvature…
We prove the absence of scale-invariant one-loop corrections to the superhorizon curvature perturbations from small-scale (potentially enhanced) scalar perturbations in a general inflationary setup, including the transient ultra-slow-roll…
The application of Effective Field Theory (EFT) methods to inflation has taken a central role in our current understanding of the very early universe. The EFT perspective has been particularly useful in analyzing the self-interactions…
In this work we study the GW170817-compatible Einstein-Gauss-Bonnet theories during the reheating and the end of inflationary era. Given the scalar field potential $V(\phi)$ which can have some intrinsic importance for the theory,…
It is known that the curvature perturbation on uniform energy density (or comoving or uniform Hubble) slices on superhorizon scales is conserved to full nonlinear order if the pressure is only a function of the energy density (ie, if the…
We explore some issues in slow roll inflation in situations where field excursions are small compared to $M_p$. We argue that for small field inflation, minimizing fine tuning requires low energy supersymmetry and a tightly constrained…
We describe models of single-field inflation with small and sharp step features in the potential (and sound speed) of the inflaton field, in the context of the Effective Field Theory of Inflation. This approach allows us to study the…
We study inflation in a recently proposed gravitational effective field theory describing the trace anomaly. The theory requires an additional scalar which is massless in the early universe. This scalar -- referenced as an anomalyon --…
We propose a new class of inflation model, G-inflation, which has a Galileon-like nonlinear derivative interaction of the form $G(\phi, (\nabla\phi)^2)\Box\phi$ in the Lagrangian with the resultant equations of motion being of second order.…
We consider models of inflation in supergravity with a shift symmetry. We focus on models with one moduli and one inflaton field. The presence of this symmetry guarantees the existence of a flat direction for the inflaton field. Mildly…
We provide a study of the effects of the Effective Field Theory (EFT) generalisation of stochastic inflation on the production of primordial black holes (PBHs) in a model-independent single-field context. We demonstrate how the scalar…
Slow-roll inflation is studied as an effective field theory.We find as consistent form of the inflaton potential V(phi)=N M^4 w(phi/[sqrt{N}M_P]) where phi is the inflaton field, M the inflation energy scale, M_P the Planck mass, and N~50…
The tensor fraction $r\simeq 0.16$ found by BICEP2 corresponds to a Hubble parameter $H\simeq 1.0\times 10^{14}\GeV$ during inflation. This has two implications for the (single-field) slow-roll inflation hypothesis. First, the inflaton…
In order to produce appreciable amount of primordial black holes (PBHs), the square amplitude of curvature perturbation must take a large value of $\mathcal{O}(0.01)$, namely, seven digits larger than the value observed by cosmic microwave…
Primordial black hole (PBH) abundance limits constrain the primordial power spectrum, and hence models of inflation, on scales far smaller than those probed by cosmological observations. Single field inflation models which are compatible…
The ability to reproduce the observed matter power spectrum $P(k)$ to high accuracy is often considered as a triumph of inflation. In this work, we explore an alternative explanation for the power spectrum based on nonperturbative quantum…
Cosmological inflation gives a natural answer for a variety of cosmological questions, including the horizon problem, the flatness problem, and others. However, inflation yields new questions relating to the flatness of the inflaton…
Higher-order alpha'-corrections are a generic feature of type IIB string compactifications. In KKLT-like models of moduli stabilization they provide a mechanism of breaking the no-scale structure of the volume modulus. We present a model of…