Related papers: Initial conditions for quintessence after inflatio…
We consider the question of deriving initial conditions for scalar fields in driving both an early and late quintessence phase. The dark energy field presents an unresolved uniformity problem. Further difficulties with initial conditions…
Cosmological inflation remains to be a unique mechanism of generation of plausible initial conditions in the early universe. In particular, it generates the primordial quasiclassical perturbations with power spectrum determined by the…
We propose an idea to build a bridge between reheating and late-time observations in quintessential inflation by backtracking the evolution of the inflaton field from the present time to the end of reheating. This idea is implemented when…
In single field slow-roll inflation, one expects that the spectral index $n_s -1$ is first order in slow-roll parameters. Similarly, its running $\alpha_s = dn_s/d \log k$ and the running of the running $\beta_s = d\alpha_s/d \log k$ are…
The non-linear dynamics of long-wavelength cosmological fluctuations may be phrased in terms of an effective classical, but stochastic evolution equation. The stochastic noise represents short-wavelength modes that continually redshift into…
The implementation of a Planck-scale high frequency and short wavelength cutoff in quantum theories on expanding backgrounds may have potentially nontrivial implications, such as the breaking of local Lorentz invariance and the existence of…
We present a new approach to quintessential inflation, in which both dark energy and inflation are explained by the evolution of a single scalar field. We start from a simple scalar potential with both oscillatory and exponential behavior.…
A model of cosmological inflation is proposed in which field space is a hyperbolic plane. The inflaton never slow-rolls, and instead orbits the bottom of the potential, buoyed by a centrifugal force. Though initial velocities redshift away…
We investigate when effective theories of a scalar field on (quasi-)de Sitter background break down through the stochastic formalism. We derive the Fokker-Planck equation leaving the second order time derivative of the scalar field.…
A semiclassical description of quantum systems is applied to probe the dynamics of the cosmological model of an inflationary universe with quadratic inflaton potential, described in a quantum framework of geometrodynamics. The systematic…
We study the non-linear dynamics of an inflationary phase transition in a quartically self coupled inflaton model within the framework of a de Sitter background. Large N and Hartree non-perturbative approximations combined with…
We study chaotic inflation driven by a real, massive, homogeneous minimally coupled scalar field in a flat Robertson-Walker spacetime. The semiclassical limit for gravity is considered, whereas the scalar field is treated quantum…
We investigate the quantum cosmological tunneling scenario for inflationary models. Within a path-integral approach, we derive the corresponding tunneling probability distribution. A sharp peak in this distribution can be interpreted as the…
Cosmic inflation provides a window to the highest energy densities accessible in nature, far beyond those achievable in any realistic terrestrial experiment. Theoretical insights into the inflationary era and its observational probes may…
In this paper we consider inflation as a probe of new physics near the string or Planck scale. We discuss how new physics can be captured by the choice of vacuum, and how this leads to modifications of the primordial spectrum as well as the…
We study the effects of non-trivial initial quantum states for inflationary fluctuations within the context of the effective field theory for inflation constructed by Cheung et al. which allows us to discriminate between different initial…
We numerically compute features in the power-spectrum that originate from the decay of fields during inflation. Using a simple, phenomenological, multi-field setup, we increase the number of fields from a few to thousands. Whenever a field…
We consider primordial fluctuations in thermal inflation scenario. Since the thermal inflation drives about 10 $e$-folds after the standard inflation, the time of horizon-exit during inflation corresponding to the present observational…
Inflection point inflation generically includes a deviation from slow-roll when the inflaton approaches the inflection point. Such deviations are shown to be generated by transitions between singular trajectories. The effects on the power…
Using numerical solutions of the full Einstein field equations coupled to a scalar inflaton field in 3+1 dimensions, we study the conditions under which a universe that is initially expanding, highly inhomogeneous and dominated by gradient…