Related papers: Cosmic Strings from Thermal Inflation
String theory abounds with light scalar fields (the dilaton and various moduli) which create a host of observational problems, and notably some serious cosmological difficulties similar to the ones associated with the Polonyi field in the…
Cosmic strings provide a radically different paradigm for the formation of structure to the prevailing inflationary one. They afford some extra technical complications: for example, the calculation of the power spectrum of matter and…
Inflationary cosmology has provided a predictive and phenomenologically very successful scenario for early universe cosmology. Attempts to implement inflation using scalar fields, however, lead to models with serious conceptual problems. I…
A cosmic string network created during an inflationary stage in the early Universe - here defined as i-string network - is expected to enter a transient stretching regime during inflation, in which its characteristic length is stretched to…
We study the possibility of extended inflation in the effective theory of gravity from strings compactified to four dimensions and find that it strongly depends on the mechanism of supersymmetry breaking. We consider a general class of…
The possibility of thermally induced initial density perturbations in inflationary cosmology is examined. The fluctuation dynamics of a scalar field plus thermal bath system during slow roll is described by a Langevin-like equation.…
We consider a novel model of cosmic inflation. In our model one does not need any specific matter field to drive inflation, but inflation stems from the microscopic, Planck scale structure of spacetime, thus being of quantum gravitational…
We review cosmological inflation and its realization in quantum field theory and in string theory. This material is a portion of a book, also entitled "Inflation and String Theory", to be published by Cambridge University Press.
The notion of inflation (past or present) in standard cosmological models is shown to be a consequence of a sufficiently high second law entropy production from the internal heating of the universal expansion. The longitudinal viscous…
We point out that the temperature fluctuations of cosmic microwave background (CMB) can be generated in a way that is different from the one usually assumed in slow-roll inflation. Our mechanism is based on vacuum fluctuations of fields…
The combination of non-minimal couplings to gravity with the post-inflationary kinetic-dominated era typically appearing in quintessential inflation scenarios may lead to the spontaneous symmetry breaking of internal symmetries and its…
We present a model for quintessential inflation using a string modulus for the inflaton - quintessence field. The scalar potential of our model is based on generic non-perturbative potentials arising in flux compactifications. We assume an…
Due to the quasi-exponential red-shifting which occurs during an inflationary period in the very early Universe, wavelengths which at the present time correspond to cosmological lengths are in general sub-Planckian during the early stages…
We propose that inflation is driven by a (complex) neutral Higgs of the MSSM extension of the SM, in a chaotic-like inflation setting. The SUSY breaking soft term masses are of order $10^{12}-10^{13}$ GeV, which is identified with the…
Closed string tachyon condensation in spacetime generates potentials on the worldsheet that model two-dimensional inflationary cosmology. These models illustrate and elucidate a variety of aspects of inflation, in particular the generation…
Inflation, as currently understood, requires the presence of fields with very flat potentials. Supersymmetric models in which supersymmetry breaking is communicated by supergravity naturally yield such fields, but the scales are typically…
Detecting the parity-odd, or B-mode, polarization pattern in the cosmic microwave background radiation due to primordial gravity waves is considered to be the final observational key to confirming the inflationary paradigm. The search for…
If the cosmological inflationary scenario took place in the cosmic landscape in string theory, the inflaton, the scalar mode responsible for inflation, would have meandered in a complicated multi-dimensional potential. We show that this…
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 validity of warm inflation is investigated in the light of recent CMB missions in both strong and weak dissipative regimes. The tensor to scalar ratio of various inflationary models is found to be consistent with the recent CMB results…