Related papers: Scale Invariant Extension of the Standard Model: A…
Cosmological inflation models with modifications to include recent cosmological observations has been an active area of research after WMAP 3 results, which have given us information about the composition of dark matter, normal matter and…
Scalar fields provide attractive modifications of pre-BBN cosmology, which have interesting implications for dark matter abundances. We analyse the effect of these modifications on the number of e-foldings between horizon exit of CMB modes…
We discuss cosmological inflation in the minimal Wess-Zumino model with a single massive chiral supermultiplet. With suitable parameters and assuming a plausible initial condition at the start of the inflationary epoch, the model can yield…
We present a scale invariant extension of the Standard model allowing for the Kim-Shifman-Vainstein-Zakharov (KSVZ) axion solution of the strong CP problem in QCD. We add the minimal number of new particles and show that the Peccei-Quinn…
We discuss the cosmological phenomenology of biscalar-tensor models displaying a maximally symmetric Einstein-frame kinetic sector and constructed on the basis of scale symmetry and volume-preserving diffeomorphisms. These theories contain…
We present a model with a complex and a real scalar fields and a potential whose symmetry is explicitly broken by Planck-scale physics. For exponentially small breaking, the model accounts for the period of inflation in the early universe…
We extend an alternative, phenomenological approach to inflation by means of an equation of state and a sound speed, both of them functions of the number of $e$-folds and four phenomenological parameters. This approach captures a number of…
In this paper, inflationary cosmology is reviewed, paying particular attention to its observational signatures associated with large-scale density perturbations generated from quantum fluctuations. In the most general scalar-tensor theories…
We study a model of inflation where the scalar perturbations are almost gaussian while there is sizable (equilateral) nongaussianity in the tensor sector. In this model, a rolling pseudoscalar gravitationally coupled to the inflaton…
In this dissertation, we introduce a general way of modeling inflation in a framework that is independent of the exact nature of the inflationary potential. Because of the choice of our initial conditions and the continuity of the scale…
We investigate the inflationary implications of extensions of Poincare symmetry. The simplest constructions with local scale invariance lead to universal predictions: the spectral index is $n_s = 1-2/N$, in excellent agreement with Planck…
We present here the effective theory of inflation `a la Ginsburg-Landau in which the inflaton potential is a polynomial. The slow-roll expansion becomes a systematic 1/N expansion where N ~ 60. The spectral index and the ratio of…
In single-field, slow-roll inflationary models, scalar and tensorial (Gaussian) perturbations are both characterized by a zero mean and a non-zero variance. In position space, the corresponding variance of those fields diverges in the…
We present a model which contains a new complex scalar field $\Psi$, interacting with a new real scalar field, $\chi$, and an effective potential whose symmetry is almost exact, being explicitly broken by Planck-scale effects. We study the…
This article presents a possible inflation scenario as a consequence of non-minimal gravitational couplings in the Conformal Standard Model. The model consists, in comparison to the SM, of additional right-chiral neutrinos and complex…
We present a model with a complex and a real scalar fields and a potential whose symmetry is explicitly broken by Planck-scale physics. For exponentially small breaking, the model accounts for the period of inflation in the early universe…
We consider inflation in a universe with a positive cosmological constant and a nonminimally coupled scalar field, in which the field couples both quadratically and quartically to the Ricci scalar. When considered in the Einstein frame and…
Though predictions of the simplest inflationary cosmological models with cold dark matter, flat space and approximately flat initial spectrum of adiabatic perturbations are remarkably close to observational data, we have to go beyond them…
Observable quantities in cosmology are dimensionless, and therefore independent of the units in which they are measured. This is true of all physical quantities associated with the primordial perturbations that source cosmic microwave…
We consider non-minimal \lambda \phi^4 inflation in a gauged non-supersymmetric U(1)_{B-L} model containing the gravitational coupling \xi \mathcal{R} \Phi^\dagger \Phi, where \mathcal{R} denotes the Ricci scalar and the standard model…