Related papers: Too Hot to Handle: Searching for Inflationary Part…
Following Philcox et al. (2025), we investigate a scenario with a massive partner to the inflaton ($O(100)$ times the inflationary Hubble scale), in which particles are produced during a narrow time period, leaving characteristic hot- or…
Heavy particles with masses much bigger than the inflationary Hubble scale $H_*$, can get non-adiabatically pair produced during inflation through their couplings to the inflaton. If such couplings give rise to time-dependent masses for the…
The recent Planck results and future releases on the horizon present a key opportunity to address a fundamental question in inflationary cosmology of whether primordial density perturbations have a quantum or thermal origin, i.e. whether…
Is there new physics hidden in the four-point function of the cosmic microwave background (CMB)? We conduct a detailed analysis of the Planck PR4 temperature and polarization trispectrum for $\ell\in[2,2048]$. Using the theoretical and…
Particles with masses much larger than the inflationary Hubble scale, $H_I$, can be pair-produced non-adiabatically during inflation. Due to their large masses, the produced particles modify the curvature perturbation around their…
A class of inflationary models that involve rapid bursts of particle productions predict observational signatures, such as bump-like features in the primordial scalar power spectrum. In this work, we analyze such models by comparing their…
In this paper, we present the first comprehensive CMB data analysis of cosmological collider physics. New heavy particles during inflation can leave imprints in the primordial correlators which are observable in today's cosmological…
Multi-field models of inflation typically assume that interactions between particles can be treated perturbatively. Strongly-coupled models provide an intriguing alternative and may offer novel inflationary phenomenology. We study the…
Bursts of particle production during inflation provide a well-motivated mechanism for creating bump like features in the primordial power spectrum. Current data constrains these features to be less than about 5% the size of the featureless…
In a variety of inflation models the motion of the inflaton may trigger the production of some non-inflaton particles during inflation, for example via parametric resonance or a phase transition. Particle production during inflation leads…
We present the implications for cosmic inflation of the Planck measurements of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropies in both temperature and polarization based on the full Planck survey. The Planck full mission temperature data…
Prediction of inflationary observables from the temperature fluctuation of Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) can play a pivotal role in predicting the reheating dynamics in the early universe. In this work, we highlight how the inflationary…
Massive particles produced during inflation impact soft limits of primordial correlators. Searching for these signatures presents an exciting opportunity to uncover the particle spectrum in the inflationary epoch. We present…
The phenomenon of resonant production of particles {\it after} inflation has received much attention in the past few years. In a new application of resonant production of particles, we consider the effect of a resonance {\em during}…
We forecast the ability of cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature and polarization datasets to constrain theories of eternal inflation using cosmic bubble collisions. Using the Fisher matrix formalism, we determine both the overall…
We consider trapped inflation in a higher dimensional field space: particle production at a dense distribution of extra species points leads to a terminal velocity at which inflation can be driven in steep potentials. We compute an…
Space-based missions studying the cosmic microwave background (CMB) have progressively refined the parameter space in conventional models of inflation shortly ($\sim 10^{-37}$ seconds) after the big bang. While most inflationary scenarios…
The angular power spectrum of the cosmic microwave background temperature anisotropy observed by WMAP has an anomalous dip at l~20 and bump at l~40. One explanation for this structure is the presence of features in the primordial curvature…
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…
We analyze an inflationary model in which part of the power in density perturbations arises due to particle production. The amount of particle production is modulated by an auxiliary field. Given an initial gradient for the auxiliary field,…