Related papers: Decoupling, Trans-Planckia and Inflation
We study adiabatic (curvature) and entropy (isocurvature) perturbations produced during a period of cosmological inflation that is driven by multiple scalar fields with an arbitrary interaction potential. A local rotation in field space is…
Cosmic Inflation provides an attractive framework for understanding the early universe and the cosmic microwave background. It can readily involve energies close to the scale at which Quantum Gravity effects become important. General…
In a recently proposed approach to testing models of inflation by Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation the reheating temperature is directly expressed in terms of the CMB observables. Its model independent bounds translate in a given…
We calculate the spectrum of density fluctuations in models of inflation based on a weakly self-coupled scalar matter field minimally coupled to gravity, and specifically investigate the dependence of the predictions on modifications of the…
We investigate whether a recently proposed modulation of the power spectrum of primordial density fluctuations generated through transplankian (maybe stringy) effects during inflation can be observed. We briefly review the mechanism leading…
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.…
I present a pedagogical review of inflation and the cosmic microwave background. I describe how a short period of accelerated expansion can replace the special initial conditions of the standard big bang model. I also describe the…
The ability to test and constrain theories of cosmic inflation will advance substantially over the next decade. Key data sources include cosmic microwave background (CMB) measurements and observations of the distribution of matter at…
The inflationary cosmology paradigm is very successful in explaining the CMB anisotropy to the percent level. Besides the dependence on the inflationary model, the power spectra, spectral tilt and non-Gaussianity of the CMB temperature…
The so-called "trans-Planckian" problem of inflation may be evaded by positing that modes come into existence only when they became "cis-Planckian" by virtue of expansion. However, this would imply that for any mode a new random realization…
In this paper we will analyze generic predictions of an inflection-point model of inflation with Hubble-induced corrections and study them in light of the Planck data. Typically inflection-point models of inflation can be embedded within…
We investigate the impact of a hypothesized delayed initiation of inflation, characterized by a cutoff k_min to the primordial power spectrum in the cosmic microwave background (CMB). This cutoff affects both the scalar and tensor spectra,…
In loop quantum cosmology, the universe avoids a big bang singularity and undergoes an early and short super-inflation phase. During super-inflation, non-perturbative quantum corrections to the dynamics drive an inflaton field up its…
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…
Inflation has been the driving idea in cosmology for two decades and is a pillar of the New Cosmology. The inflationary paradigm has now passed its first round of significant tests, with two of its three basics predictions confirmed at…
We are in the era of precision cosmology which offers us a unique opportunity to investigate beyond standard model physics. Toward this endeavor, inflaton is assumed to be a perfect new physics candidate. In this submission, we explore the…
Observations of the polarization of the cosmic microwave backround (CMB) have the potential to place much tighter constraints on cosmological parameters than observations of the fluctuations in temperature alone. We discuss using CMB…
In order to solve the fine-tuning problem of the cosmological constant, we propose a simple model with the vacuum energy non-minimally coupled to the inflaton field. In this model, the vacuum energy decays to the inflaton during…
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…
We construct a string-inspired nonsingular cosmological scenario in which an inflaton field is driven up the potential before the graceful exit by employing a low-energy string effective action with an orbifold compactification. This sets…