Related papers: Tensor Fluctuations in the Early Universe
We consider the impact of thermal inflation -- a short, secondary period of inflation that can arise in supersymmetric scenarios -- on the stochastic gravitational wave background. We show that while the primordial inflationary…
A linear polarization field on a surface is expressed in terms of scalar functions, providing an invariant separation into two components; one of these is the B mode, important as a signature of primordial gravitational waves, which would…
In cosmological models where local cosmic strings are formed at the end of a period of inflation, the perturbations are seeded both by the defects and by the quantum fluctuations. In a subset of these models, for example those based on…
It is well known that processes of first order phase transitions may have occurred in the inflationary era. If one or more occurred well before the end of inflation, the nucleated bubbles are stretched to large scales and the primordial…
In most current models of inflation based on a weakly self-coupled scalar matter field minimally coupled to gravity, the period of inflation lasts so long that, at the beginning of the inflationary period, the physical wavelengths of…
Cosmological perturbations, originating in the quantum fluctuations of the fields that drive inflation, are observed to be nearly scale invariant at the largest scales. At smaller scales, however, perturbations are not severely constrained…
We study the polarization-temperature correlations on the cosmic microwave sky resulting from an initial scale invariant spectrum of tensor (gravity wave) fluctuations, such as those which might arise during inflation. The correlation…
We study the tilt of the primordial gravitational waves spectrum. A hint of blue tilt is shown from analyzing the BICEP2 and POLARBEAR data. Motivated by this, we explore the possibilities of blue tensor spectra from the very early universe…
Measurements of CMB temperature fluctuations by the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) indicate that the fluctuation amplitude in one half of the sky differs from the amplitude in the other half. We show that such an asymmetry…
A scenario with two subsequent periods of inflationary expansion in the very early universe is examined. The model is based on a potential motivated by symmetries being found in field theory at high energy. For various parameter sets of the…
In this paper we analyze the possibility of detecting nontrivial quantum phenomena in observations of the temperature anisotropy of the cosmic background radiation (CBR), for example, if the Universe could be found in a coherent…
A recent paper argued that it is not possible to infer the energy scale of inflation from the amplitude of tensor fluctuations in the Cosmic Microwave Background, because the usual connection is substantially altered if there are a large…
Besides expanding anisotropically, the universe can also be anisotropic at the level of its (spatial) curvature. In particular, models with anisotropic curvature and isotropic expansion leads both to a $\Lambda$CDM-like phenomenology and to…
A particularly attractive feature of inflation is that quantum fluctuations in the inflaton field may have seeded inhomogeneities in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) and the formation of large-scale structure. In this paper, we…
We show that models of new particle physics containing massless pseudoscalar fields super-weakly coupled to photons can be very efficiently probed with CMB polarization anisotropies. The stochastic pseudoscalar fluctuations generated during…
It has recently been shown [1] that light vector particles produced from inflationary fluctuations can give rise to the dark matter in the Universe. A similar mechanism has been discussed in [2] for a non-minimally coupled scalar enjoying a…
A better understanding of the formation of large-scale structure in the Universe is arguably the most pressing question in cosmology. The most compelling and promising theoretical paradigm, Inflation + Cold Dark Matter, holds that the…
Inflation creates large-scale cosmological density perturbations that are characterized by an isotropic, homogeneous, and Gaussian random distribution about a locally flat background. Even in a flat universe, the spatial curvature measured…
Although the paradigm of inflation has been extensively studied to demonstrate how macroscopic inhomogeneities in our universe originate from quantum fluctuations, most of the established literature ignores the crucial role that…
We extend the reach of the ``cosmological collider'' for massive gauge boson production during inflation from the CMB scales to the interferometer scales. Considering a Chern-Simons coupling between the gauge bosons and the pseudoscalar…