Related papers: A Goldstone Boson Equivalence for Inflation
It is shown that the squeezed limit of inflationary expectation values follows from reparametrization invariance of the wavefunction of the universe. This translates into a constraint on the longitudinal modes of functional derivatives of…
We elaborate on a minimal inflation scenario based entirely on the general properties of supersymmetry breaking in supergravity models. We identify the inflaton as the scalar component of the Goldstino superfield. We write plausible…
We describe a two-field model that generalizes Natural Inflation, in which the inflaton is the pseudo-Goldstone boson of an approximate symmetry that is spontaneously broken, and the radial mode is dynamical. We analyze how the dynamics…
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…
Massive particles produced during inflation leave specific signatures in soft limits of correlation functions of primordial fluctuations. When the Goldstone boson of broken time translations acquires a reduced speed of sound, implying that…
We show that a minimal extension of the Standard Model including a new complex scalar field can explain inflation and the observed effective number of neutrinos. The real part of the singlet plays the role of the inflaton field, while the…
The scale at which supersymmetry is broken and the mechanism by which supersymmetry breaking is fed down to the observable sector has rich implications on the way Nature may have chosen to accomplish inflation. We discuss a simple model for…
Inflation, as currently understood, requires the presence of fields with very flat potentials. Supersymmetric models in which supersymmetry breaking is communicated by supergravity naturally yield such fields, but the scales are typically…
In this work we present the effective field theory of primordial statistical anisotropies generated during anisotropic inflation involving a background $U(1)$ gauge field. Besides the usual Goldstone boson associated with the breaking of…
We compare the standard single scalar field inflationary predictions with those of an inflationary phase driven by a tachyon field. A slow-roll formalism is defined for tachyon inflation, and we derive the spectra of scalar and tensor…
We re-examine large scalar fields within effective field theory, in particular focussing on the issues raised by their use in inflationary models (as suggested by BICEP2 to obtain primordial tensor modes). We argue that when the large-field…
Slow-roll inflation requires the inflaton field to have an exceptionally flat potential, which combined with measurements of the scale of inflation demands some degree of fine-tuning. Alternatively, the flatness of the potential could be…
In construction of an inflationary model, one usually assumes that the matter sector of the gravitational action is minimally coupled to the background. It means that the matter (inflaton) part of the action is coupled with the same metric…
We propose a model for cosmic inflation which is based on an effective description of strongly interacting, nonsupersymmetric matter within the framework of dynamical Abelian projection and centerization. The underlying gauge symmetry is…
We analyse the dynamics of spinodal decomposition in inflationary cosmology using the closed time path formalism of out of equilibrium quantum field theory combined with the non-perturbative Hartree approximation. In addition to a general…
In our quest to understand the generation of cosmological perturbations, we face two serious obstacles: we do not have direct information about the environment experienced by primordial perturbations during inflation, and our observables…
The Universe is not just cold dark matter and dark energy, it also contains baryons, radiation and neutrinos. The presence of these components, beyond the pressure-less cold dark matter and the quasi-uniform dark energy ones, imply that the…
Supersolid inflation is a class of inflationary theories that simultaneously breaks time and space reparameterization invariance during inflation, with distinctive features for the dynamics of cosmological fluctuations. We investigate…
We study the decay of scalar fields, in particular the inflaton, into lighter scalars in a De Sitter spacetime background. After providing a practical definition of the rate, we focus on the case of an inflaton interacting with a massless…
We compute the low energy effective field theory (EFT) expansion for single-field inflationary models that descend from a parent theory containing multiple other scalar fields. By assuming that all other degrees of freedom in the parent…