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We prove that many cosmological models characterized by vectors nonminimally coupled to the curvature (such as the Turner-Widrow mechanism for the production of magnetic fields during inflation, and models of vector inflation or vector…
We propose a class of scalar models that, once coupled to gravity, lead to cosmologies that smoothly and stably connect an inflationary quasi-de Sitter universe to a low, or even zero-curvature, maximally symmetric spacetime in the…
Phonons in expanding Bose-Einstein condensates with wavelengths much larger than the healing length behave in the same way as quantum fields within a universe undergoing an accelerated expansion. This analogy facilitates the application of…
The squeezed limit of the primordial curvature bispectrum is an extremely sensitive probe of new physics and encodes information about additional fields active during inflation such as their masses and spins. In the conventional setup,…
Reheating after inflation can proceed even if the inflaton couples to Standard Model (SM) particles only gravitationally. However, particle production during the transition between de-Sitter expansion and a decelerating Universe is rather…
We suggest a path integral formulation for the tunneling cosmological state, which admits a consistent renormalization and renormalization group (RG) improvement in particle physics applications of quantum cosmology. We apply this…
We present a simplified review of inflationary cosmology across various modified gravity theories. These include models based on curvature, torsion, and non-metricity. We explore how scalar fields interact with different geometric…
Cosmological collider signals of primordial non-Gaussianity arise at tree level when an extra scalar has Hubble mass during inflation. We critically review the formalism finding that a large class of inflationary theories, based on…
We propose a new mechanism to generate density perturbations in inflationary models. Spatial fluctuations in the decay rate of the inflaton field to ordinary matter lead to fluctuations in the reheating temperature. We argue that in most…
We present the first computation of the cosmological perturbations generated during inflation up to second order in deviations from the homogeneous background solution. Our results, which fully account for the inflaton self-interactions as…
In this study, we explore the back reaction of phase transitions in the spectator sector on the inflaton field during slow-roll inflation. Due to the significant excursion of the inflaton field, these phase transitions are likely to occur…
In order to go beyond the mean-field approximation, commonly used in the inflationary computations, an identification of the quantum constituents of the inflationary background is made. In particular, the homogeneous scalar field…
Nowadays cosmological inflation is the most accepted mechanism to explain the primordial seeds that led to the structure formation observed in the Universe. Current observations are in well agreement to initial adiabatic conditions, which…
Cosmic inflation provides a mechanism for generating the early density perturbations that seeded the large-scale structures we see today. Primordial non-Gaussianity is among the most promising of few observational tests of physics at this…
We study a simple extension of quasi-single field inflation in which the inflaton interacts with multiple extra massive scalars known as isocurvatons. Due to the breaking of time translational invariance by the inflaton background, the…
Models of inflation in a gravitational background with an anisotropic space-time scaling are studied. The background is a higher-dimensional Lifshitz throat with the anisotropy scaling $z\neq 1$. After the dimensional reduction, the…
Using the dS/QFT correspondence in the context of inflation allows for the study of interesting, otherwise inaccessible physics. In particular, by studying inflation via its dual field theory at the boundary of the de Sitter space, it may…
Our present understanding of the reheating phase is incomplete due to a lack of observations. Apart from its cosmological implications, the reheating should play a vital role in particle physics and inflation model building. Conventionally…
We argue that the Higgs boson of the Standard Model can lead to inflation and produce cosmological perturbations in accordance with observations. An essential requirement is the non-minimal coupling of the Higgs scalar field to gravity; no…
We study the decay of scalar fields, in particular the inflaton, into lighter scalars in a De Sitter spacetime background. After providing a practical definition of the rate, we focus on the case of an inflaton interacting with a massless…