Related papers: Double Inflation and the Low CMB Quadrupole
Motivated by BICEP2 results on the CMB polarization B-mode which imply primordial gravitational waves are produced when the Universe has the expansion rate of about $H \approx 10^{14}$ GeV, and by deviations from a smooth power-law…
Erickcek, Kamionkowski and Carroll proposed in 2008 that the dipole modulation of the CMB could be due to a very large scale perturbation of the field $\phi$ causing the primordial curvature perturbation. We repeat their calculation using…
We conduct a model-independent analysis of temporal features during inflation in the large-scale CMB temperature power spectrum allowing for the possibility of non-negligible tensor contributions. Of 20 principal components of the…
We clarify classical inflaton models by considering them as effective field theories `a la Ginzburg-Landau. In this approach, the WMAP statement excluding the pure phi^4 potential implies the presence of an inflaton mass term at the scale m…
Power spectra always play an important role in the theory of inflation. In particular, the ability to reproduce the galaxy matter power spectrum and the CMB temperature angular power spectrum coefficients to high accuracy is often…
There exists some evidence of a suppression in power in the CMB multipoles around $l \sim 20-30$. If taken seriously, this is in tension with the simplest inflationary models driven by a single scalar field with a standard type of slowly…
We study temperature and polarization anisotropies of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation sourced from primordial cross-bispectra between metric perturbations and vector fields, which are generated from the inflation model where…
Inflation creates both scalar (density) and tensor (gravity wave) metric perturbations. We find that the tensor mode contribution to the CMB anisotropy on large-angular scales can only exceed that of the scalar mode in models where the…
We revisit the scenario where inflation is preceded by a radiation era by considering that the inflaton too could have been in thermal equilibrium early in the radiation era. Hence we take into account not only the effect of a…
We explicate the origin of the temperature quadrupole in the adiabatic dark energy model and explore the mechanism by which scale invariant isocurvature dark energy perturbations can lead to its sharp suppression. The model requires…
The recent observation of the cosmic microwave background anisotropy by the WMAP confirmed that the lower multipoles are considerably suppressed. From the standpoint of the cosmic variance, it is nothing but a statistical accident.…
A scenario with two subsequent periods of inflationary expansion in the very early universe is examined. The model is based on a potential motivated by symmetries being found in field theory at high energy. For various parameter sets of the…
String Theory and Supergravity allow, in principle, to follow the transition of the inflaton from pre-inflationary fast roll to slow roll. This introduces an infrared depression in the primordial power spectrum that might have left an…
We investigate the formation of large peaks in the inflationary curvature power spectrum from double-well potentials. In such scenarios, the initial CMB spectrum is created at large field values. Subsequently, the inflaton will cross one of…
We study reheating in $\alpha$-attractor models of inflation in which the inflaton couples to other scalars or fermions. We show that the parameter space contains viable regions in which the inflaton couplings to radiation can be determined…
We confront predictions of inflationary scenarios with the WMAP data, in combination with complementary small-scale CMB measurements and large-scale structure data. The WMAP detection of a large-angle anti-correlation in the…
Thermal inflation, a brief low energy inflation after the primordial inflation, resolves the moduli problem in the context of supersymmetric cosmology. In the thermal inflation scenario, the primordial power spectrum is modestly redshifted…
Recent cosmic microwave background (CMB) observations put strong constraints on the spatial curvature via estimation of the parameter $\Omega_k$ assuming an almost scale invariant primordial power spectrum. We study the evolution of the…
The existence of the inflationary era in the early Universe seems to be strongly supported by recent CMB observations. However, only a few realistic inflation scenarios which have close relation to particle physics seem to have been known…
Recently, BICEP2 measurements of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) $B$-mode polarization at degree angular scales has indicated the presence of tensor modes with a high tensor-to-scalar ratio of $r=0.2$ when assuming nearly…