Related papers: On the duality in constant-roll inflation
We summarize our work on a consistency condition for inflation in two-field cosmological models, in the regime of rapid turn and third-order slow roll. To ensure a sustained inflationary period of this type, one needs to satisfy a certain…
Cosmological $\alpha$-attractors stand out as particularly compelling models to describe inflation in the very early universe, naturally meeting tight observational bounds from cosmic microwave background (CMB) experiments. We investigate…
This thesis presents a possible inflation scenario as a consequence of non-minimal gravitational couplings in the Conformal Standard Model. That model consists, in comparison to the SM, of additional right-chiral neutrinos and a complex…
An appealing feature of inflationary cosmology is the presence of a phase-space attractor, "slow roll", which washes out the dependence on initial field velocities. We investigate the robustness of this property under backreaction from…
Modular invariance is a striking symmetry in string theory, which may keep stringy corrections under control. In this paper, we investigate a phenomenological consequence of the modular invariance, assuming that this symmetry is preserved…
We show a model-independent fine-tuning issue in the DBI inflationary mechanism. DBI inflation requires a warp factor h small enough to sufficiently slow down the inflaton. On the other hand, the Einstein equation in extra dimensions under…
We obtain cosmological constraints on models of inflation which exhibit rapid roll solutions. Rapid roll attractors exist for potentials with large mass terms and are thus of interest for inflationary model building within string theory. We…
A field kinetic coupling with the Einstein tensor leads to a gravitationally enhanced friction during inflation, by which even steep potentials with theoretically natural model parameters can drive cosmic acceleration. In the presence of…
Slow-roll inflation is studied as an effective field theory.We find as consistent form of the inflaton potential V(phi)=N M^4 w(phi/[sqrt{N}M_P]) where phi is the inflaton field, M the inflation energy scale, M_P the Planck mass, and N~50…
We study a single field inflationary model modified by a non-minimal coupling term between the Ricci scalar $R$ and the scalar field $\varphi$ in the context of constant-roll inflation. The first-order formalism is used to analyse the…
The recent three-year WMAP data selects large-field models with certain power-law potentials and small-field models for all power-law potentials as consistent inflation models. We study the large-field and small-field inflation model with a…
The scalar perturbations in inflationary models, based on a two-component diagonal non-linear sigma model, are considered. For inhomogeneities generated at an inflationary stage, the law of motion of the comoving curvature ${\cal R}$ is…
We consider a single scalar field inflation model with Higgs potential and curvature corrections given by non-minimal derivative coupling to gravity and coupling to the Gauss-Bonnet invariant. Exact analytical expressions, within the…
The curvaton and the inhomogeneous reheating scenarios for the generation of the cosmological curvature perturbation on large scales represent an alternative to the standard slow-roll scenario where the observed density perturbations are…
The recent progress in embedding inflation in string theory has made it clear that the problem of moduli stabilization cannot be ignored in this context. In many models a special role is played by the volume modulus, which is modified in…
The Wheeler-DeWitt equation provides the probability distribution for the curvature perturbation, the gauge invariant quantum fluctuation of the inflaton. From this, we can find a tower of power spectra which is not found in a perturbative…
Nonminimal coupling of the inflaton field to the Ricci curvature of spacetime is generally unavoidable, and the paradigm of inflation should be generalized by including the corresponding term in the Lagrangian of the inflationary theory.…
We consider the effects of inhomogeneous initial conditions in both the scalar field profile and the extrinsic curvature on different inflationary models. In particular, we compare the robustness of small field inflation to that of large…
In a recent paper Damour and Mukhanov describe a scenario where inflation may continue during the oscillatory phase. This effect is possible because the scalar field spends a significant fraction of each period of oscillation on the upper…
In the framework of effective field theories with prominent helicity-0 and helicity-1 fields coupled to each other via a dimension-3 operator, we study the dynamics of inflation driven by the helicity-0 mode, with a given potential energy,…