Related papers: Cosmic Inflation at the Crossroads

In this paper we consider the issue of paradigm evaluation by applying Bayes' theorem along the following nested hierarchy of progressively more complex structures: i) parameter estimation (within a model), ii) model selection and…

We present constraints on inflationary dynamics and features in the primordial power spectrum of scalar perturbations using the Cosmic Microwave Background temperature, polarization data from Planck 2018 data release and updated…

Future astrophysical datasets promise to strengthen constraints on models of inflation, and extracting these constraints requires methods and tools commensurate with the quality of the data. In this paper we describe ModeCode, a new,…

We argue that the non-detection of primordial tensor modes has taught us a great deal about the primordial universe. In single-field slow-roll inflation, the current upper bound on the tensor-to-scalar ratio, $r < 0.07$ $(95 \% ~CL)$,…

This review article aims at presenting the theory of inflation. We first describe the background spacetime behavior during the slow-roll phase and analyze how inflation ends and the Universe reheats. Then, we present the theory of…

The BICEP2 collaboration reports a detection of primordial cosmic microwave background (CMB) B-mode with a tensor-scalar ratio $r=0.20^{+0.07}_{-0.05}$ (68% C.L.). However, this result is in tension with the recent Planck limit, $r<0.11$…

We show that the recently released B-mode polarisation data from the South Pole Telescope (SPT) favour a non-vanishing contribution of primordial gravitational waves of inflationary origin which is in tension with the previous BICEP-Keck…

At the level of heuristic effective dynamics, we investigate the cosmological inflation with holonomy corrections of loop quantum cosmology (LQC) in the $k=0$ Friedmann-Robertson-Walker model with a single inflaton field subject to a simple…

In this paper we use two methods to constrain the the canonical single-field slow-roll inflation model. The first method exploits the analytic slow-roll-parameter dependence of primordial perturbations, and the second consists of a…

We emphasize that the estimation of cosmological parameters from cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropy data, such as the recent high resolution maps from BOOMERanG and MAXIMA-1, requires assumptions about the primordial spectra. The…

The big bang model and the history of the early universe according to the grand unified theories are introduced. The shortcomings of big bang are discussed together with their resolution by inflationary cosmology. Inflation, the subsequent…

The recent local measurement of the Hubble constant based on the distance-ladder method has reached a $1.91\%$ precision, but this result is in tension with the early-universe measurements at the more than 4$\sigma$ level, bringing a crisis…

Observations of the cosmic microwave background do not yet determine whether inflation was driven by a slowly-rolling scalar field or involved another physical mechanism. In this paper we discuss the prospects of using the power spectra of…

The BICEP/$\textit{Keck}$ (BK) series of cosmic microwave background (CMB) polarization experiments has, over the past decade and a half, produced a series of field-leading constraints on cosmic inflation via measurements of the "B-mode"…

We investigate the implications for inflation of the detection of B-modes polarization in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) by BICEP2. We show that the hypothesis of primordial origin of the measurement is only favored by the first four…

Inflation is an early period of accelerated cosmic expansion, thought to be sourced by high energy physics. A key task today is to use the influx of increasingly precise observational data to constrain the plethora of inflationary models…

We perform a Bayesian analysis to study possible features in the primordial inflationary power spectrum of scalar perturbations. In particular, we analyse the possibility of detecting the imprint of these primordial features in the…

We have studied the paradigm of cosmic inflation using the simplest model based on the idea of supersymmetric hybrid inflation with non-minimal coupling to gravity, specially under the slow-roll approximation following the superconformal…

Recent tentative findings of non-Gaussian structure in the COBE-DMR dataset have triggered renewed attention to candidate models from which such intrinsic signature could arise. In the framework of slow roll inflation with built-in non…

We investigate the effects of non-zero spatial curvature on cosmic inflation in the light of cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropy measurements from the Planck 2018 legacy release and from the 2015 observing season of BICEP2 and the…