Related papers: Inflation at the Edge
This chapter describes how the Cosmic Gravitational Wave Background induces a specific type of CMB polarization and describes the first experiment dedicated to testing this most-promising signature of inflation. This experiment, the…
We investigate the degree to which the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) can be used to constrain primordial non-Gaussianity coming from the presence of spinning particles coupled to the inflaton. We compute the $\langle TTT \rangle$ and…
Boomerang, Maxima, DASI, CBI and VSA significantly increase the case for accelerated expansion in the early universe (the inflationary paradigm) and at the current epoch (dark energy dominance), especially when combined with data on high…
We describe the implications of cosmic microwave background (CMB) observations and galaxy and cluster surveys of large scale structure (LSS) for theories of cosmic structure formation, especially emphasizing the recent Boomerang and Maxima…
The conventional $\Lambda$CDM cosmological model supplemented by the inflation concept describes the Universe very well. However, there are still a few concerns: new Planck data impose constraints on the shape of the inflaton potential,…
The recent BICEP2 measurement of B-modes in the polarization of the cosmic microwave background suggests that inflation was driven by a field at an energy scale of $2\times 10^{16}$ GeV. I explore the potential of upcoming CMB polarization…
Inflationary cosmology has become one of the cornerstones of modern cosmology. Inflation was the first theory within which it was possible to make predictions about the structure of the Universe on large scales, based on causal physics. The…
In this talk I will review the present status of inflationary cosmology and its emergence as the basic paradigm behind the Standard Cosmological Model, with parameters determined today at better than 10% level from CMB and LSS observations.…
Cosmic inflation is the cornerstone of modern cosmology. In particular, following the Planck mission reports presented in 2015 regarding cosmic microwave background (CMB), there is an increasing interest in searching for inflaton candidates…
The observational status of inflation after the Planck 2013 and 2015 results and the BICEP2/Keck Array and Planck joint analysis is discussed. These pedagogical lecture notes are intended to serve as a technical guide filling the gap…
We investigate the effects of non-zero spatial curvature on cosmic inflation in the light of cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropy measurements from the Planck 2018 legacy release and from the 2015 observing season of BICEP2 and the…
In the last few decades, advances in observational cosmology have given us a standard model of cosmology. We know the content of the universe to within a few percent. With more ambitious experiments on the way, we hope to move beyond the…
A self-consistent modular cosmology scenario and its testability in view of future CMB experiments are discussed. Particular attention is drawn to the enhanced symmetric points in moduli space which play crucial roles in our scenario. The…
Current bounds from the polarization of the CMB predict the scale-invariant gravitational wave (GW) background of inflation to be out of reach for upcoming GW interferometers. This prospect dramatically changes if the inflaton is a…
We review the particle theory origin of inflation and curvaton mechanisms for generating large scale structures and the observed temperature anisotropy in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation. Since inflaton or curvaton energy…
The observed power spectrum of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) is consistent with inflationary cosmology, which predicts a nearly scale-invariant power spectrum of quantum fluctuations of the inflaton field as they exit the Hubble…
The temperature perturbations of the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB) appear systematically suppressed, at large angular scales, with respect to the prediction of the LambdaCDM concordance model. This behavior might be a glimpse…
The success of a given inflationary model crucially depends upon two features: its predictions for observables such as those of the Cosmic Microwave background (CMB) and its insensitivity to the unknown ultraviolet (UV) physics such as…
We review the constraints that the recently released Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) Planck data put on inflation and we argue that single field slow-roll inflationary scenarios (with minimal kinetic term) are favored. Then, within this…
We analyze a class of generalized inflationary models proposed in Ref. [1], known as $\beta$-exponential inflation. We show that this kind of potential can arise in the context of brane cosmology, where the field describing the size of the…