Related papers: Observable Gravitational Waves from Hyperkination …
Gravitational waves (GW) produced in the early Universe contribute to the number of relativistic degrees of freedom, $N_{\rm eff}$, during Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN). By using the constraints on $N_{\rm eff}$, we present a new bound on…
We propose a 3 + 1 dimensional model of gravity which results in inflation at early times, followed by radiation- and matter-dominated epochs and a subsequent acceleration at late times. Both the inflation and late time acceleration are…
Preheating after inflation involves large, time-dependent field inhomogeneities, which act as a classical source of gravitational radiation. The resulting spectrum might be probed by direct detection experiments if inflation occurs at a low…
Inflation may have been driven by a component which violated the Null-Energy Condition, thereby leading to {\it super inflation}. We provide the formalism to study cosmological perturbations when such a component is described by a scalar…
We present a mechanism for gravitational wave (GW) production from isocurvature perturbations in spectator scalar fields during inflation. These energetically subdominant fields develop blue-tilted power spectra through inflationary…
We discuss the detectability of gravitational waves with a time dependent mass contribution, by means of the stochastic gravitational wave observations. Such a mass term typically arises in the cosmological solutions of massive gravity…
There are at least three cosmic backgrounds of primordial gravitational waves coming from inflation: those produced during inflation and associated with the stretching of quantum modes; those produced at the violent stage of preheating…
We discuss the production of gravity waves from the fragmentation of a supersymmetric condensate in the early universe. Supersymmetry predicts the existence of flat directions in the potential. At the end of inflation, the scalar fields…
A large class of quintessential inflationary models, recently proposed by Peebles and Vilenkin, leads to post-inflationary phases whose effective equation of state is stiffer than radiation. The expected gravitational waves logarithmic…
We investigate the stochastic gravitational wave (GW) spectrum resulting from graviton bremsstrahlung during inflationary reheating. We focus on an inflaton $\phi$ oscillating around a generic monomial potential $V(\phi) \propto \phi^n$,…
Motivated by dualistic considerations of the reality of quark condensation in quantum chromodynamics, and the connections of supergravity to the exotic physics of string and M-theory, in this thesis we investigate the dynamical breaking of…
In this work we shall study a possible pre-inflationary scenario for our Universe and how this might be realized by $f(R)$ gravity. Specifically, we shall introduce a scenario in which the Universe in the pre-inflationary era contracts…
Matrix inflation, or M-flation, is a string theory motivated inflationary model with three scalar field matrices and gauge fields in the adjoint representation of the $\mathbf{U}(N)$ gauge group. One of these $3N^2$ scalars appears as the…
We calculate the production of the gravitational waves from a double inflation model with lattice simulations. Between the two inflationary stages, gravitational waves with a characteristic frequency are produced by fluctuations of the…
In warm inflation, dissipation due to the interactions of the inflaton field to other light degrees of freedom leads naturally to the enhancement of the primordial spectrum during the last 10-20 efolds of inflation. We study this effect in…
It is shown that a large class of higher-order (i.e. non-quadratic) scalar kinetic terms can, without the help of potential terms, drive an inflationary evolution starting from rather generic initial conditions. In many models, this…
We discuss the evolution of gravitational waves in a brane-world cosmology embedded in five-dimensional anti-de Sitter spacetime. We show that during slow-roll inflation, modelled as a period of quasi-de Sitter expansion on the brane, there…
Oscillons are massive, long-lived, localized excitations of a scalar field. We show that in a large class of well-motivated single-field models, inflation is followed by self-resonance, leading to copious oscillon generation and a lengthy…
We study inflation driven by a slow-rolling inflaton field, characterised by a quadratic potential, and incorporating radiative corrections within the context of supergravity. In this model the energy scale of inflation is not overly…
We study post-inflationary evolution in $\alpha$-attractor T-models of inflation. We consider the dynamics of both scalar fields present in these models: the inflaton and the spectator, as a negative field-space curvature may lead to…