Related papers: Starobinsky inflation and Swampland conjectures
We discuss the possibility that the inflationary paradigm, undoubtfully today's best framework to understand all the present cosmological data, may still have some viable challengers. The underlying idea for such discussions is that…
In these lectures I review the present status of the so-called Standard Cosmological Model, based on the hot Big Bang Theory and the Inflationary Paradigm. I will make special emphasis on the recent developments in observational cosmology,…
Inflation has been the leading early universe scenario for two decades, and has become an accepted element of the successful `cosmic concordance' model. However, there are many puzzling features of the resulting theory. It requires both…
The anomaly-induced inflation (modified Starobinsky model) is based on the application of the effective quantum field theory approach to the Early Universe. We present a brief general review of the model and show that it does not require a…
Starobinsky inflation is an attractive, fundamental model to explain the Planck measurements, and its higher-order extension may allow us to probe quantum gravity effects. We show that future CMB data combined with the 21cm intensity map…
Despite its central role in modern cosmology, doubts are often expressed as to whether cosmological inflation is really a falsifiable theory. We distinguish two facets of inflation, one as a theory of initial conditions for the hot big bang…
A general overview of the history and present status of inflationary cosmology is given. Recent developments discussed in this paper include the hybrid inflation scenario, the theory of reheating, and the theory of inflating tolopogical…
We investigate a (super-)renormalizable and ghost-free theory of gravity, showing that under a natural (exponential) ansatz of the form factor and a suitable truncation it can give rise to the Starobinsky inflationary theory in cosmological…
We examine the power-law Starobinsky model, a generalized version of the Starobinsky inflation model, characterized by a power-law correction to Einstein gravity. Employing the $f(R)$ formalism, the scalar and tensor power spectra were…
Discovered almost forty years ago, inflation has become the leading paradigm for the early universe. Originally invented to avoid the fine-tuning puzzles of the standard model of cosmology, the so-called hot Big Bang phase, inflation has…
Recent studies show that there is tension between the de Sitter swampland conjectures proposed by Obeid, et al. and inflationary cosmology. In this paper, we consider an alternative to inflation, `tachyacoustic' cosmology, in light of…
The main aim of this paper is to provide a qualitative introduction to the cosmic inflation and its relationship with current cosmological observations. The inflationary model solves many of the fundamental problems that challenge the…
In this work, we perform a numerical study of three Starobinsky--type inflationary scenarios: the $\alpha$--Starobinsky inflationary model, the power--law Starobinsky inflationary model, and the power--law $\alpha$--Starobinsky inflationary…
Starobinsky inflation is currently one of the best models concerning agreement with cosmological data. Despite this observational success, it is still lacking a robust embedding into a UV complete theory. Previous efforts to derive…
We explore two saddle point inflationary scenarios in the context of higher order corrections related to different generalisations of general relativity. Firstly, we deal with Jordan frame Starobinsky potential, for which we identify a…
I review the current status of the theory of Cosmic Inflation. My discussion covers the motivation and implementation of the idea, as well as an analysis of recent successes and open questions. There is a special discussion of the physics…
We discuss some implications of the recently suggested Swampland conjecture $\frac{|\nabla V|}{V}\gtrsim c\sim 1$, together with a previous one $\Delta \phi \lesssim 1$. We list some implications for particle phenomenology and the Early…
In a previous paper we proposed a new approach to the beginning of inflation -- a lingering universe. The universe begins in a lingering state with a nearly vanishing Hubble parameter. This calls into question the absolute age of the…
The swampland conjectures from String theory have had very interesting implications for cosmology and particularly for Inflation. It has been shown that the single field inflationary models in a GR based cosmology are in unavoidable…
We discuss the relations between swampland conjectures and observational constraints on both inflation and dark energy. Using the requirement $|\nabla V|\geq c V$, with $c$ as a universal constant whose value can be derived from inflation,…