Related papers: Stochastic inflation beyond slow roll: noise model…
The separate-universe approach gives an intuitive way to understand the evolution of cosmological perturbations in the long-wavelength limit. It uses solutions of the spatially-homogeneous equations of motion to model the evolution of the…
Cosmic inflation provides a mechanism for generating the early density perturbations that seeded the large-scale structures we see today. Primordial non-Gaussianity is among the most promising of few observational tests of physics at this…
We study the evolution of quantum fluctuations of gravity around an inflationary solution in renormalizable quantum gravity, in which the initial scalar-fluctuation dominance is shown by the background-free nature expressed by a special…
We consider a model of two-field inflation, containing an ordinary scalar field and a DBI field. We work beyond the slow-roll approximation, but we assume a separable Hubble parameter. We then derive the form of potential in this framework…
We study the generation of primordial perturbations in a (single-field) slow-roll inflationary universe. In momentum space, these (Gaussian) perturbations are characterized by a zero mean and a non-zero variance $\Delta^2(k, t)$. However,…
We consider a curvaton scenario in which the late-time domination and the generation of the curvature perturbation is achieved by a non-oscillatory (NO) curvaton potential. Instead of considering the conventional curvaton oscillation, we…
We point out that inflationary superhorizon fluctuations can be effectively described by a set of equations analogous to those governing a superfluid. This is achieved through a functional Schr\"odinger approach to the evolution of the…
We compute the rate with which super-Hubble cosmological fluctuations are decohered during inflation, by their gravitational interactions with unobserved shorter-wavelength scalar and tensor modes. We do so using Open Effective Field Theory…
We study the Brownian motion of a field where there are boundaries in the inflationary field space. Both the field and the boundary undergo Brownian motions with the amplitudes of the noises determined by the Hubble expansion rate of the…
We consider slow-roll inflation in the context of recently proposed four-dimensional effective gravity induced on the world-volume of a three-brane in five-dimensional Einstein gravity. We find significant modifications of the simplest…
We present a class of models in which the primordial metric fluctuations do not necessarily obey Gaussian statistics. These models are realizations of mechanisms in which non-Gaussianity is first generated by a light scalar field and then…
Constraining primordial non-Gaussianities (PNGs) in the large-scale cosmic structure (LSS) is an important step in understanding properties of the early universe, specifically in distinguishing between different inflationary models.…
The effect of large quantum fluctuations on primordial black-hole formation during an inflationary phase along a plateau is investigated. By using techniques of stochastic inflation in combination with replica field theory and the…
An anthropic understanding of the cosmological constant requires that the vacuum energy at late time scans from one patch of the universe to another. If the vacuum energy during inflation also scans, the various patches of the universe…
The statistical properties of the primordial density perturbations has been considered in the past decade as a powerful probe of the physical processes taking place in the early universe. Within the inflationary paradigm, the properties of…
The effective field theory (EFT) of inflation provides an essential picture to explore the effects of the unknown high energy physics in the single scalar field inflation models. For a generic EFT of inflation, possible high energy…
Understanding stochastic inflation, and in particular the systematic computation of controlled corrections from first principles, remains an important open problem. In this work, we address this problem from two complementary perspectives.…
We use the 3+1 formalism of numerical relativity to investigate the robustness of Starobinsky and Higgs inflation to inhomogeneous initial conditions, in the form of either field gradient or kinetic energy density. Sub-Hubble and…
Non-trivial inflaton self-interactions can yield calculable signatures of primordial non-Gaussianity that are measurable in cosmic surveys. Surprisingly, we find that the phase transition to slow-roll eternal inflation is often incalculable…
The behavior of the quintessence field is studied during inflation. In order to have a satisfactory model of dark energy, the quintessence field value today should be as insensible to the initial conditions as possible. Usually, only the…