Related papers: Causality Bounds on the Primordial Power Spectrum
We study the power spectrum of the mass density perturbations in an inflation scenario that includes thermal dissipation. We show that the condition on which the thermal fluctuations dominate the primordial density perturbations can easily…
Within the low-energy effective field theories of QED and gravity, the low-energy speed of light or that of gravitational waves can typically be mildly superluminal in curved spacetimes. Related to this, small scattering time advances…
In warm inflation, dissipation due to the interactions of the inflaton field to other light degrees of freedom leads naturally to the enhancement of the primordial spectrum during the last 10-20 efolds of inflation. We study this effect in…
We study thermally induced density perturbations during inflation. This scenario is characterized by two thermodynamical conditions: (1) The primordial perturbations originate in the epoch when the inflationary universe contains a…
We discuss whether an unaccounted contribution to the Cosmic Microwave Background polarization $B$-mode by primordial magnetic fields (PMFs) can bias future constraints on inflationary gravitational waves. As a case-study, we consider a…
We show that a conformal-invariance violating coupling of the inflaton to electromagnetism produces a cross correlation between curvature fluctuations and a spectrum of primordial magnetic fields. According to this model, in the case of…
We study the generation of primordial fluctuations in pure de Sitter inflation where the quantum scalar field dynamics are governed by polymer (not Schrodinger) quantization. This quantization scheme is related to, but distinct from, the…
Inflation produces a primordial spectrum of gravity waves in addition to the density perturbations which seed structure formation. We compute the signature of these gravity waves in the large scale shear field. In particular, the shear can…
We build upon previous analytical treatments of scalar perturbations in curved inflationary universes to obtain analytical templates for the primordial tensor power spectrum in models with non-zero primordial spatial curvature. These…
It has recently been suggested that a strongly coupled phase of inflation may be described holographically in terms of a weakly coupled quantum field theory (QFT). Here, we explore the possibility that the wave function of an inflationary…
Effective field theories (EFT) are commonly used to parameterize effects of BSM physics in vector boson scattering (VBS). For Wilson coefficients which are large enough to produce presently observable effects, the validity range of the EFT…
We study different mechanisms by which the speed of primordial curvature perturbations can produce an enhancement of the curvature spectrum, which could lead to the production of primordial black holes (PBH). One possibility is the growth…
We explore the constraints imposed on higher curvature corrections of the Lovelock type due to causality restrictions in the boundary of asymptotically AdS space-time. In the framework of AdS/CFT, this is related to positivity of the energy…
Typically, constraints on parameters of the effective field theory (EFT) of dark energy have been obtained in the Jordan frame, where matter fields are minimally coupled to gravity. To connect these constraints with those of the EFT of…
Quantum field theory, which is generally used to describe the origin of large-scale gravitational perturbations during cosmic inflation, has been shown to omit an important physical effect in curved space-time, the nonlocal entanglement…
We develop methods to calculate the curvature power spectrum in models where features in the inflaton potential nonlinearly excite modes and generate high frequency features in the spectrum. The first nontrivial effect of excitations…
We investigate a new mechanism to create large curvature perturbations on small scales due to parameter resonance in a single-field inflationary model with a small periodic structure upon the potential. After reentering the horizon, the…
A generic feature of viable $F(R)$ gravity is investigated: It is demonstrated that during the matter dominated era the large frequency oscillations of the effective dark energy may influence the behavior of higher derivatives of the Hubble…
We explore a plausible mechanism that the hemispherical power asymmetry in the CMB is produced by the spatial variation of the primordial sound speed parameter. We suggest that in a generalized approach of the $\delta N$ formalism the local…
We study single-field inflationary models with steep step-like features in the potential that lead to the temporary violation of the slow-roll conditions during the evolution of the inflaton. These features enhance the power spectrum of the…