Related papers: Kination-like Era Driven by the Effective Inflaton…
We construct a single-field model of inflation that achieves remarkable agreement with Planck and BICEP/Keck cosmological observations. The model, via the presence of an ultra-slow-roll phase, generates a sizable scalar-induced…
In a class of (pseudoscalar) inflation, inflationary phase is followed by a kination phase, where the Universe is dominated by the kinetic energy of the inflaton that runs away in a vanishing scalar potential. In this class of…
We consider the inflationary universe with a spectator scalar field coupled to a $U(1)$ gauge field and calculate curvature perturbation and gravitational waves (GWs). We find that the sourced GWs can be larger than the one from vacuum…
We consider models of chaotic inflation driven by the real parts of a conjugate pair of Higgs superfields involved in the spontaneous breaking of a grand unification symmetry at a scale assuming its supersymmetric value. Employing quadratic…
After the inflationary phase, the universe enters the preheating phase, during which the inflaton field rolls down its potential and oscillates. When the potential significantly deviates from a parabolic shape at its minimum, these…
We investigate the cosmological consequences of a theory of induced gravity in which the scalar field is identified with the Higgs field of the first symmetry breaking of a mi\-ni\-mal SU(5) GUT. The mass of the X-boson determines a great…
We propose a general framework in which a phase transition is triggered during cosmic inflation by the slow-roll dynamics of a spectator field. The topological defects formed at the transition are inflated outside the horizon, reenter it…
In this paper we investigate the vacuum stability of the non-minimally coupled Standard-Model Higgs during a phase of kinetic domination following the end of inflation. The non-minimal coupling to curvature stabilises the Higgs fluctuations…
We propose a novel mechanism for gravitational wave (GW) production sourced by spectator scalar fields during inflation. These fields, while not driving cosmic expansion, generate blue-tilted isocurvature fluctuations that naturally satisfy…
Inflaton decay inevitably emits gravitons through bremsstrahlung during reheating. We show that the soft part of this emission amplitude, fixed by Weinberg's soft-graviton theorem, becomes an irreducible stochastic gravitational-wave (GW)…
Following inflation, the Universe may pass through an early matter-dominated phase supported by the oscillating inflaton condensate. Initially small fluctuations in the condensate grow gravitationally on subhorizon scales and can collapse…
In a recent paper, which has been published in Nature, the LIGO Scientific Collaboration (LSC) obtained an upper limit on the stochastic gravitational-wave background of cosmological origin by using the data from a two-year science run of…
We propose that inflation is driven by a (complex) neutral Higgs of the MSSM extension of the SM, in a chaotic-like inflation setting. The SUSY breaking soft term masses are of order $10^{12}-10^{13}$ GeV, which is identified with the…
The Higgs-Dilaton cosmological model is able to describe simultaneously an inflationary expansion in the early Universe and a dark energy dominated stage responsible for the present day acceleration. It also leads to a non-trivial relation…
Inflation driven by a generic self-gravitating medium is an interesting alternative to study the impact of spontaneous spacetime symmetry breaking during a quasi de-Sitter phase, in particular the 4-dimensional diffeomorphism invariance of…
A scalar Higgs field can be repeatedly switched on and off when it couples to a classically oscillating scalar modulus field. The modulus flips the Higgs mass term between stable and tachyonic values. We study a cosmological scenario in…
We investigate the nonlinear dynamics of hybrid inflation models, which are characterized by two real scalar fields interacting quadratically. We start by solving numerically the coupled Klein-Gordon equations in static Minkowski spacetime,…
I will review briefly how inflation is expected to generate a stochastic background of primordial gravitational waves (GWs). Then, I will discuss how such GWs can be enhanced by a stiff period following inflation, enough to be observable. I…
Gravitational waves (GWs) produced during first-order phase transitions (FOPTs) in the early universe provide a powerful probe of nonstandard cosmological histories. We study GW production from a FOPT ending a kination-dominated epoch in…
The accelerated expansion of the early universe is an integral part of modern cosmology and dynamically realized by the mechanism of inflation. The simplest theoretical description of the inflationary paradigm is based on the assumption of…