Related papers: Gravitational Wave Signatures from Lepton Number B…
One of the most important issues in an inflationary theory as standard or quintessential inflation is the mechanism to reheat the universe after the end of the inflationary period in order to match with the Hot Big Bang universe. In…
Inflation models can have an early phase of inflation where the evolution of the inflaton is driven by quantum fluctuations before entering the phase driven by the slope of the scalar field potential. For a Coleman-Weinberg potential this…
The effective field theory (EFT) concept provides a necessary tool for obtaining general predictions of low-energy theory valid below its unitarity-breaking scale (cutoff scale). Early Universe inflation and subsequent reheating could be a…
We reconsider the enhancement of primordial gravitational waves that arises from a quantum gravitational model of inflation. A distinctive feature of this model is that the end of inflation witnesses a brief phase during which the Hubble…
We consider the generation of large-scale magnetic fields in slow-roll inflation. The inflaton field is described in a supergravity framework where the conformal invariance of the electromagnetic field is generically and naturally broken.…
The scalar field theory of cosmological inflation constitutes nowadays one of the preferred scenarios for the physics of the early universe. In this paper we aim at studying the inflationary universe making use of a numerical lattice…
We show that the seesaw mechanism as well as leptogenesis are natural outcomes of a viable chaotic inflation in supergravity. The inflation model contains two superfields, the inflaton and stabilizer fields, which, being singlets under the…
Although inflationary models generically predict a flat spectrum of gravitational waves, we point out a general process that produces a sharply peaked spectrum of gravitational radiation. This process is generic for inflationary models with…
We study non-thermal resonant leptogenesis in a general setting where a heavy majoron $\phi$ decays to right-handed neutrinos (RHNs) whose further out-of-equilibrium decay generates the required lepton asymmetry. Domination of the energy…
Generation of magnetic fields during inflation is a promising mechanism for the origin of the observed large scale magnetic fields in the universe. Among several attempts, a popular model is one where the inflaton and the electromagnetic…
In this paper we analyze the spectrum of the primordial gravitational waves (GWs) predicted in the Standard Model*Axion*Seesaw*Higgs portal inflation (SMASH) model, which was proposed as a minimal extension of the Standard Model that…
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…
Inflation may have been driven by a component which violated the Null-Energy Condition, thereby leading to {\it super inflation}. We provide the formalism to study cosmological perturbations when such a component is described by a scalar…
Trapped inflation is a mechanism in which particle production from the moving inflaton is the main source of friction in the inflaton equation of motion. The produced fields source inflaton perturbations, which dominate over the vacuum…
The self coupling $\lambda$ of the Higgs boson in the Standard Model may show critical behavior, i.e. the Higgs potential may have a point at an energy scale $\sim 10^{17-18}$ GeV where both the first and second derivatives (almost) vanish.…
This work deals with the dynamics of inflation in the context of a scalar-vector-tensor theory of gravity exhibiting spontaneous Lorentz violation at early times. We describe a first-order formalism which we use to obtain new exact Lorentz…
Recent observations by pulsar timing arrays (PTAs) indicate a potential detection of a stochastic gravitational wave (GW) background. Metastable cosmic strings have been recognized as a possible source of the observed signals. In this…
We re-examine large scalar fields within effective field theory, in particular focussing on the issues raised by their use in inflationary models (as suggested by BICEP2 to obtain primordial tensor modes). We argue that when the large-field…
Most of the inflation models end up with non-vanishing vacuum expectation values of the inflaton fields \phi in the true vacuum, which induce, in general, nonvanishing auxiliary field G_\phi for the inflaton potential in supergravity. We…
After cosmic inflation, coherent oscillations of the inflaton field about a monomial potential $V(\phi)\sim \phi^k$ result in an expansion phase characterized by a stiff equation-of-state $w\simeq(k-2)/(k+2)$. Sourced by the oscillating…