Related papers: Testing inflation on all scales: a case study with…
We study the quantum fluctuations of scalar fields with a variable effective mass during an inflationary phase. We consider the situation where the effective mass depends on a background scalar field, which evolves during inflation from…
In inflationary scenarios with more than one scalar field, inflation may proceed even if each of the individual fields has a potential too steep for that field to sustain inflation on its own. We show that scalar fields with exponential…
Motivated by the prospect of testing inflation from precision cosmic microwave background observations, we present analytic results for scalar and tensor perturbations in single-field inflation models based on the application of uniform…
We revisit arguments that simple models of inflation with a small red tilt in the scalar power spectrum generically yield an observable tensor spectrum. We show that criteria for fine-tuning based upon the algebraic simplicity of the…
We consider cosmological inflationary models in which vector fields play some role in the generation of the primordial curvature perturbation $\zeta$. Such models are interesting because the involved vector fields naturally seed statistical…
We study a model for reheating that has been much investigated for parametric resonance, having a quartic interaction of the scalar inflaton with another scalar field. Attention is particularly on the quantum excitations of the inflaton…
With a scalar field non-minimally coupled to curvature, the underlying geometry and variational principle of gravity - metric or Palatini - becomes important and makes a difference, as the field dynamics and observational predictions…
Adding a sine-type interaction to inflationary models with two fields can evoke a classical trajectory with many turns in field space. Under conditions we discuss, the enhancement of the spectrum of adiabatic fluctuations resulting from…
We study a mechanism for the amplification of the inflationary scalar perturbation when the inflaton field action is non-canonical, i.e. the inflaton kinetic term has a non-standard form. For such a case the speed of sound of the…
We study small field models of inflation, which, against previous expectations, yield significant Gravitational Wave (GW) signal while reproducing other measured observable quantities in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). We numerically…
We study (p)reheating in alpha-attractor T-models of inflation, taking into account both scalar fields present in these models: the inflaton and the spectator. The two-field model has a negative field-space curvature which, at the end of…
We consider the scale-invariant inflationary model studied in [1]. The Lagrangian includes all the scale-invariant operators that can be built with combinations of $R$, $R^2$ and one scalar field. The equations of motion show that the…
In scale-invariant models of fundamental physics all mass scales are generated via spontaneous symmetry breaking. In this work, we study inflation in scale-invariant quadratic gravity, in which the Planck mass is generated classically by a…
Primordial black holes (PBHs) can be the source for all or a part of today's dark matter density. Inflation provides a mechanism for generating the seeds of PBHs in the presence of a temporal period where the velocity of an inflaton field…
We consider a mechanism for producing a significant population of primordial black holes (PBHs) and an observable stochastic gravitational wave background (SGWB) within string theory inspired models of inflation. In this framework where…
We investigate the possibility that primordial black holes (PBHs) can be formed from large curvature perturbations generated during the waterfall phase transition in a hybrid inflation model driven by an axion-like particle (ALP) $\phi$.…
Models of cosmic inflation suggest that our universe underwent an early phase of accelerated expansion, driven by the dynamics of one or more scalar fields. Inflationary models make specific, quantitative predictions for several observable…
A broad range of single field models of inflation are analyzed in light of all relevant recent cosmological data, checking whether they can lead to the formation of long--lived Primordial Black Holes (PBHs) as candidate for dark matter. To…
We explore the Gravitational Waves (GW) phenomenology of a simple class of supergravity models that can explain and unify inflation and Primordial Black Holes (PBH) as Dark Matter (DM). Our (modified) supergravity models naturally lead to a…
In hybrid inflationary models, inflation ends by a sudden instability associated with a steep ridge in the potential. Here we argue that this feature can generate a large contribution to the curvature perturbation on observable scales. This…