Related papers: Fine-Tuning Solution for Hybrid Inflation in Dissi…
We introduce a new class of models of chaotic inflation inspired by the superconformal approach to supergravity. This class of models allows a functional freedom of choice of the inflaton potential V = |f(\phi)|^2. The simplest model of…
Quantum and thermal fluctuations of an irrotational fluid are studied across the transition regime connecting a protoinflationary phase of decelerated expansion to an accelerated epoch driven by a single inflaton field. The…
We clarify inflaton models by considering them as effective field theories in the Ginzburg-Landau spirit.In this new approach, the precise form of the inflationary potential is constructed from the present WMAP data, and a useful scheme is…
We explore how disorder and interactions conspire in lattice models with sequentially activated hopping to produce novel k-body (or many-body) localized phases. Specifically, we show that when disorder is added to the set of interacting…
We study the phenomenon of discrete symmetry breaking during the inflationary epoch, using a model-independent approach based on the effective field theory of inflation. We work in a context where both time reparameterization symmetry and…
Inflation generally assumes a field with nonzero potential that leads to inflationary expansion happening at arbitrarily early times. We demonstrate potentially observable consequences of inflation with a finite initial time in a model in…
We consider the non-supersymmetric models of chaotic (driven by a quadratic potential) and hybrid inflation, taking into account the minimal possible radiative corrections to the inflationary potential. We show that two simple coupling…
In this thesis we will primarily demonstrate how additional scalar degrees of freedom - which are motivated from many high-energy embeddings - open up new observational windows onto the physics of inflation. We construct a Bayesian…
Stochastic effects in generic scenarios of inflation with multiple fields are investigated. First passage time techniques are employed to calculate the statistical moments of the number of inflationary $e$-folds, which give rise to all…
We study and analyze the dynamic properties of both canonical and noncanonical warm inflationary models with dissipative effects. We consider different models of canonical warm inflation with different dissipative coefficients and prove…
We consider a variant of Hybrid Inflation, where inflation is driven by two interacting scalar fields, one of which has a `Mexican hat' potential and the other a quartic potential. Given the appropriate initial conditions one of the fields…
The effective equation of motion is derived for a scalar field interacting with other fields in a Friedman-Robertson-Walker background space-time. The dissipative behavior reflected in this effective evolution equation is studied both in…
How sensitive are the predictions of inflation to pre-inflationary conditions when the number of efolds of inflation is not too large? In an attempt to address this question, we consider a simple model where the inflationary era is preceded…
The evolution of a scalar field is explored taking into account the presence of a background fluid in a positively curved Universe in the framework of loop quantum cosmology. Though the mechanism that provides the initial conditions for…
In an alternative mechanism recently proposed, adiabatic cosmological perturbations are generated at the decay of the inflaton field due to small fluctuations of its coupling to matter. This happens whenever the coupling is governed by the…
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…
We analyze constraints on parameters characterizing the pre-inflating universe in an open inflation model with a present slightly open $\Lambda$CDM universe. We employ an analytic model to show that for a broad class of inflation-generating…
We show that the standard model Higgs field can realize the quadratic chaotic inflation, if the kinetic term is significantly modified at large field values. This is a simple realization of the so-called running kinetic inflation. The point…
Stochastic effects in multi-field inflationary scenarios are investigated. A hierarchy of diffusion equations is derived, the solutions of which yield moments of the numbers of inflationary $e$-folds. Solving the resulting partial…
In this brief review we introduce the methods of quantum field theory out of equilibrium and study the non-equilibrium aspects of phase transitions. Specifically we critically study the picture of the ``slow-roll'' phase transition in the…