Related papers: Cosmic Inflation at the Crossroads
We introduce a new method for applying an inflationary prior to a cosmological dataset that includes relations between observables at arbitrary order in the slow roll expansion. The process is based on the inflationary flow equations, and…
Observational tests during the next decade may determine if the evolution of the Universe can be understood from fundamental physical principles, or if special initial conditions, coincidences, and new, untestable physical laws must be…
The implications of the WMAP (Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe) third year data for inflation are investigated using both the slow-roll approximation and an exact numerical integration of the inflationary power spectra including a…
In light of BICEP2, we reexamine single field inflationary models in which the inflaton is a composite state stemming from various four-dimensional strongly coupled theories. We study in the Einstein frame a set of cosmological parameters,…
Inflationary cosmology is the leading explanation of the very early universe. Many different models of inflation have been constructed which fit current observational data. In this work theoretical and numerical methods for constraining the…
We show that next generation Cosmic Microwave Background experiments will be capable of the first ever measurement of the inflaton coupling to other particles, opening a new window to probe the connection between cosmic inflation and…
Cosmic Inflation provides an attractive framework for understanding the early universe and the cosmic microwave background. It can readily involve energies close to the scale at which Quantum Gravity effects become important. General…
The Higgs field is an attractive candidate for the inflaton because it is an observationally confirmed fundamental scalar field. Importantly, it can be modeled by the most general renormalizable scalar potential. However, if the classical…
The early universe according to the big bang and the grand unified theories is discussed. The shortcomings of big bang are summarized together with their resolution by inflationary cosmology. Inflation, the subsequent oscillation and decay…
We analyze the temperature three--point correlation function and the skewness of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), providing general relations in terms of multipole coefficients. We then focus on applications to large angular scale…
We report forecast constraints on warm inflation in the light of future cosmic microwave background (CMB) surveys, with data expected to be available in the coming decade. These observations could finally give us the missing information…
Potential slow-roll parameters are widely used in inflationary cosmology to estimate the scalar and tensor perturbation amplitudes and the scalar spectral index, although the inflationary observables are fundamentally expressed in terms of…
We propose a new single field inflation model in which the usual slow-roll inflation is joined to a new period of slow-climb and slow-roll inflation through a short intermediate non-inflationary phase. We then show that primordial curvature…
We develop a cosmological model where primordial inflation is driven by a 'solid', defined as a system of three derivatively coupled scalar fields obeying certain symmetries and spontaneously breaking a certain subgroup of these. The…
The primordial four-point function encodes a wealth of information about the inflationary Universe. Despite extensive theoretical work, most models of four-point physics have never been compared to data. In this series, we conduct a…
We construct models of inflation with many randomly interacting fields and use these to study the generation of cosmological observables. We model the potentials as multi-dimensional Gaussian random fields (GRFs) and identify powerful…
We develop a quantum-cosmological framework in which the inflationary potential emerges from the structure of the wave function of the universe rather than being postulated. Starting from the Wheeler-DeWitt equation for a flat…
One of the major predictions of inflation is the existence of a stochastic background of cosmological gravitational waves (GW). These gravitational waves can induce significant temperature anisotropies in the Cosmic Microwave Background…
Warm inflation has normalized two ideas in cosmology, that in the early universe the initial primordial density perturbations generally could be of classical rather than quantum origin and that during inflation, particle production from…
Making observable predictions for cosmic inflation requires determining when the wavenumbers of astrophysical interest today exited the Hubble radius during the inflationary epoch. These instants are commonly evaluated using the slow-roll…