Related papers: Inflation without an Inflaton
We consider cosmological inflation generated by a scalar field slowly rolling off from a de Sitter maximum of its potential. The models belong to the class of hilltop models and represent the most general model of this kind in which the…
(abridged)We present a model which predicts inflation without the presence of inflaton fields, based on the \epsilon R^2 and Starobinsky models. It links the above models to the observable universe, in particular, to the ratio r of tensor…
I discuss a mechanism that renders the spectral index of the primordial spectrum and the inflationary stage independent of each other. If a scalar field acquires an appropriate time-dependent mass, it is possible to generate an adiabatic,…
We have explicitly demonstrated that scalar coupled Gauss-Bonnet gravity in four dimension can have non-trivial effects on the early inflationary stage of our universe. In particular, we have shown that the scalar coupled Gauss-Bonnet term…
Recently, it was proposed that a small true vacuum universe can inflate spontaneously, in principle. Furthermore, there should be matter creation in vacuum inflation due to quantum fluctuations, and the matter created will influence the…
We present an inflationary model that is geodesically complete and does not suffer from the transplanckian problem. In most inflationary models, massless (conformal) scalar field fluctuations in a deSitter background gives rise to a…
The curvaton scenario for the generation of the cosmological curvature perturbation on large scales represents an alternative to the standard slow-roll scenario of inflation in which the observed density perturbations are due to…
We propose a new alternative mechanism to seed a scale invariant spectrum of primordial density perturbations that does not rely on inflation. In our scenario, a perfect fluid dominates the early stages of an expanding, non-inflating…
We discuss inflation in models with large extra dimensions, driven by a bulk scalar field. The brane inflaton is then a single effective field, obtained from the bulk scalar field by scaling. The self interaction terms of the effective…
It is sometimes argued that observation of tensor modes from inflation would provide the first evidence for quantum gravity. However, in the usual inflationary formalism, also the scalar modes involve quantised metric perturbations. We…
We consider a 4+N dimensional Einstein gravity coupled to a non-linear sigma model. This theory admits a solution in which the N extra dimensions contract exponentially while the ordinary space expand exponentially. Physically, the…
We propose a non-oscillatory no-scale supergravity model of inflation (NO-NO inflation) in which the inflaton does not oscillate at the end of the inflationary era. Instead, the Universe is then dominated by the inflaton kinetic energy…
We study a generality of an inflationary scenario by integrating the Einstein equations numerically in a plane-symmetric spacetime. We consider the inhomogeneous spacetimes due to (i) localized gravitational waves with a positive…
We show how observations of the perturbation spectra produced during inflation may be used to constrain the parameters of general scalar-tensor theories of gravity, which include both an inflaton and dilaton field. An interesting feature of…
We consider a universe in which inflation commences because of a positive cosmological constant, the effect of which is progressively screened by the interaction between virtual gravitons that become trapped in the expansion of spacetime.…
This article provides an introductory review of inflation and cosmological perturbation theory. I begin by motivating the need for an epoch of inflation during the early stages of the radiation dominated era, and describe how inflation is…
We revisit alternative mechanisms of gravitational wave production during inflation and argue that they generically emit a non-negligible amount of scalar fluctuations. We find the scalar power is larger than the tensor power by a factor of…
We consider a k-essence model in which a single scalar field can be responsible for both primordial inflation and the present observed acceleration of the cosmological background geometry, while also admitting a nonsingular de Sitter…
We have studied modulated inflation that generates curvature perturbation from light-field fluctuation. As discussed in previous works, even if the fluctuation of the inflaton itself does not generate the curvature perturbation at the…
Numerical simulations of the inflationary dynamics are presented here for a single canonical scalar field minimally coupled to gravity. We spell out the basic equations governing the inflationary dynamics in terms of cosmic time $t$ and…