Related papers: Testing scale-invariant inflation against cosmolog…
It is often argued that inflation erases all the information about what took place before it started. Quantum gravity, relevant in the Planck era, seems therefore mostly impossible to probe with cosmological observations. In general, only…
We use cosmic microwave background (CMB) data from the 9-year WMAP release to derive constraints on monodromy inflation, which is characterized by a linear inflaton potential with a periodic modulation. We identify two possible periodic…
Recent measurements of temperature fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) indicate that the Universe is flat and that large-scale structure grew via gravitational infall from primordial adiabatic perturbations. Both of these…
In this letter, we propose a model of inflationary cosmology with a bounce preceded and study its primordial curvature perturbations. Our model gives rise to a primordial power spectrum with a feature of oscillation on large scales compared…
In scalaron-Higgs inflation the Standard Model Higgs boson is non-minimally coupled to gravity and the Einstein-Hilbert action is supplemented by the quadratic scalar curvature invariant. For the quartic Higgs self-coupling $\lambda$ fixed…
We develop general criteria to construct unified frameworks for inflation and quintessence which employ a unique scalar field to drive both. By using such a minimal theoretical framework we avoid having to fine-tune couplings 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…
Cosmological inflation is a popular paradigm for understanding Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMBR); however, it faces many conceptual challenges. An alternative mechanism to inflation for generating an almost scale-invariant…
With the WMAP data we can now begin to test realistic models of inflation involving multiple scalar fields. These naturally lead to correlated adiabatic and isocurvature (entropy) perturbations with a running spectral index. We present the…
We analyse the implications of the Planck data for cosmic inflation. The Planck nominal mission temperature anisotropy measurements, combined with the WMAP large-angle polarization, constrain the scalar spectral index to $n_s = 0.9603 \pm…
In the quest for unification of the Standard Model with gravity, classical scale invariance can be utilized to dynamically generate the Planck mass $M_\mathrm{Pl}$. Then, the relation of Planck scale physics to the scale of electroweak…
The nonlinear interaction between one graviton and two scalars is enhanced in specific inflationary models, potentially leading to distinguishable signatures in the bispectrum of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropies. We…
We propose an inflationary primordial feature model that can explain both the large and small-scale anomalies in the currently measured cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropy spectra, revealing a clip of adventurous history of the…
An alternative inflationary model is proposed predicated upon a consideration of the form of the uncertainty principle in a curved background spacetime. An argument is presented suggesting a possible curvature dependence in the correct…
The success of a given inflationary model crucially depends upon two features: its predictions for observables such as those of the Cosmic Microwave background (CMB) and its insensitivity to the unknown ultraviolet (UV) physics such as…
We investigate the pre-inflationary dynamics of inflation with the Starobinsky potential, favored by recent data from the Planck mission, using techniques developed to study cosmological perturbations on quantum spacetimes in the framework…
The weak gravity conjecture imposes severe constraints on natural inflation. A trans-Planckian axion decay constant can only be realized if the potential exhibits an additional (subdominant) modulation with sub-Planckian periodicity. The…
A self-consistent pre-inflationary extension of the inflationary scenario with the Starobinsky potential, favored by Planck data, is studied using techniques from loop quantum cosmology (LQC). The results are compared with the quadratic…
We examine the role of using symmetry and effective field theory in inflationary model building. We describe the standard formulation of starting with an approximate shift symmetry for a scalar field, and then introducing corrections…
We derive an expression for the non-Gaussian cosmic-microwave-background (CMB) statistic $I_l^3$ defined recently by Ferreira, Magueijo, and G\'orski in terms of the slow-roll-inflation parameters $\epsilon$ and $\eta$. This result shows…