Related papers: (Multi-field) Natural Inflation and Gravitational …
The prospects for direct measurements of inflationary gravitational waves by next generation interferometric detectors inferred from the possible detection of B-mode polarization of the cosmic microwave background are studied. We compute…
We consider single-field inflation in light of string-motivated "swampland" conjectures suggesting that effective scalar field theories with a consistent UV completion must have field excursion $\Delta \phi \lesssim M_{\rm Pl}$, in…
We study inflation in models with many interacting fields subject to randomly generated scalar potentials. We use methods from non-equilibrium random matrix theory to construct the potentials and an adaption of the 'transport method' to…
We study multi-field inflation models that contain a non-trivial field-space metric and a non-minimal coupling between the gravity and inflaton sectors. In such models it is known that even in the absence of explicit interaction terms the…
We generalize the Effective Field Theory of Inflation to include additional light scalar degrees of freedom that are in their vacuum at the time the modes of interest are crossing the horizon. In order to make the scalars light in a natural…
We place observational constraints on slow-variation single-field inflationary models by carrying out the cosmological Monte Carlo simulation with the recent data of Planck combined with the WMAP large-angle polarization, baryon acoustic…
We explore inflationary cosmology in a theory where there are two scalar fields which non-minimally couple to the Ricci scalar and an additional $R^2$ term, which breaks the conformal invariance. Particularly, we investigate the slow-roll…
Natural inflation is a good fit to all cosmic microwave background (CMB) data and may be the correct description of an early inflationary expansion of the Universe. The large angular scale CMB polarization experiment BICEP2 has announced a…
We study models of inflation where the scalar field $\phi$ that drives inflation is coupled non-minimally to gravity via $\xi \phi^2 R$, or where the gravity sector is enlarged by an $R^2$ term. We consider the original Higgs inflation,…
We revisit the small field double-well inflationary model and investigate its observational viability in light of the current Cosmic Microwave Background data. In particular, considering scenarios with minimal and nonminimal coupling…
In the context of single field inflation, models with a quadratic potential and models with a natural potential with subplanckian decay constant are in tension with the Planck data. We show that, when embedded in a two-field model with an…
Models of inflation based on axions, which owe their popularity to the robustness against UV corrections, have also a very distinct class of signatures. The relevant interactions of the axion are a non-perturbative oscillating contribution…
One of the fundamental objectives of contemporary cosmology is to understand the physics of the inflationary universe, owing to its observably verifiable predictions about the very early universe with an energy scale of $\sim 10^{16}$ GeV.…
In models of natural inflation, the inflaton is an axion-like particle. Unfortunately, axion potentials in UV-complete theories appear to be too steep to drive inflation. We show that, even for a steep potential, natural inflation can occur…
We construct a single-field model of inflation that achieves remarkable agreement with Planck and BICEP/Keck cosmological observations. The model, via the presence of an ultra-slow-roll phase, generates a sizable scalar-induced…
Forthcoming missions probing the absolute intensity of the CMB are expected to be able to measure spectral distortions, which are deviations from its blackbody distribution. As cosmic inflation can induce spectral distortions, these…
We show that a new class of helical phase inflation models can be simply realized in minimal supergravity, wherein the inflaton is the phase component of a complex field and its potential admits a deformed helicoid structure. We find a new…
We propose a new framework for multi-field inflation in which a nearly constant potential energy is maintained during inflation before decreasing rapidly, in a manner analogous to a classical top spinning upright for a long time before…
We propose a new class of natural inflation models based on a hidden scale invariance. In a very generic Wilsonian effective field theory with an arbitrary number of scalar fields, which exhibits scale invariance via the dilaton, the…
A period of inflation in the early universe produces a nearly scale-invariant spectrum of gravitational waves over a huge range in wavelength. If the amplitude of this gravitational wave background is large enough to be detectable with…