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The Universe may harbor relics of the post-inflationary epoch in the form of a network of self-ordered scalar fields. Such fossils, while consistent with current cosmological data at trace levels, may leave too weak an imprint on the cosmic…
We study a nonsingular bounce inflation model, which can drive the early universe from a contracting phase, bounce into an ordinary inflationary phase, followed by the reheating process. Besides the bounce that avoided the Big-Bang…
We show that modifications of Einstein gravity during inflation could leave potentially measurable imprints on cosmological observables in the form of non-Gaussian perturbations. This is due to the fact that these modifications appear in…
This article presents a possible inflation scenario as a consequence of non-minimal gravitational couplings in the Conformal Standard Model. The model consists, in comparison to the SM, of additional right-chiral neutrinos and complex…
We investigate the models of cosmological inflation in generalized scalar-tensor gravity, which we consider as a source of deviation from de Sitter dynamics in the case of GR. Within the framework of the proposed approach, the exact…
Several recent proposals to embed inflation into high-energy physics rely on inflationary dynamics characterized by a strongly non-geodesic motion in negatively curved field space. This naturally leads to a transient instability of…
Cosmological inflation is discussed in the framework of $F(R,{\cal G})$ gravity where $F$ is a generic function of the curvature scalar $R$ and the Gauss-Bonnet topological invariant $\cal G$. The main feature that emerges in this analysis…
We explore the generation of large-scale magnetic fields in the so-called moduli inflation. The hypercharge electromagnetic fields couple to not only a scalar field but also a pseudoscalar one, so that the conformal invariance of the…
The shift-symmetric coupling of a pseudo-scalar particle driving inflation to gauge fields provides a unique way of probing cosmic inflation. We show for an SU(2) gauge group how a classical isotropic background gauge field develops from…
We analyze cosmological perturbations to the linear order in the context of inflation with an arbitrary number of scalar fields. The fields take values on a non-trivial manifold with a positive-definite metric and are non-minimally coupled…
Forthcoming datasets from the Planck experiment and others are in a position to probe the CMB non-Gaussianity with higher accuracy than has yet been possible and potentially open a new window into the physics of the very early universe.…
Cosmological perturbations, originating in the quantum fluctuations of the fields that drive inflation, are observed to be nearly scale invariant at the largest scales. At smaller scales, however, perturbations are not severely constrained…
We derive all single-field cosmologies with unit sound speed that generate scale invariant curvature perturbations on a dynamical attractor background. We identify three distinct phases: slow-roll inflation; a slowly contracting adiabatic…
In scale-invariant models of fundamental physics, mass scales are generated by spontaneous symmetry breaking. In this work, we study inflation in scale-invariant $R^2$ gravity, in which the Planck mass is generated by a scalar field, which…
The discovery of gravitational waves from merging binary black holes has generated considerable interest in examining whether these black holes could have a primordial origin. If a significant number of black holes have to be produced in…
A Planck scale inflationary era -- in a quantum gravity theory predicting discreteness of quantum geometry at the fundamental scale -- produces the scale invariant spectrum of inhomogeneities with very small tensor-to-scalar ratio of…
A disformal coupling between two scalar fields is considered in the context of cosmological inflation. The coupling introduces novel derivative interactions mixing the kinetic terms of the fields but without introducing superluminal or…
In the standard inflationary paradigm the inhomogeneities observed in the CMB arise from quantum fluctuations of an initially homogeneous and isotropic vacuum state. This picture suffers from two well-known weaknesses. First, it assumes…
We construct gravitational modifications that go beyond Horndeski, namely theories with extended nonminimal derivative couplings, in which the coefficient functions depend not only on the scalar field but also on its kinetic energy. Such…
Noncommutative geometry can provide effective description of physics at very short distances taking into account generic effects of quantum gravity. Inflation amplifies tiny quantum fluctuations in the early universe to macroscopic scales…