Related papers: Massive scalar fields in the early Universe
Scalar-tensor theories of gravity that embrace conformal coupling to the scalar curvature are the focal point of cosmology on discussions of inflation and late-time accelerating universe. Although there exists a stringent nucleo-synthesis…
An exploratory study of the cosmology of moduli in string theory. Moduli are argued to be natural inflaton fields and lead to a robust inflationary cosmology in which inflation takes place at the top of domain walls. The amplitude of…
Gravitational waves constitute a powerful probe of the underlying theory of gravity. In extensions of general relativity, additional degrees of freedom, such as scalar fields in the gravitational sector, can modify their propagation through…
Inflation generates gravitational waves, which may be observable in the low multipoles of the cosmic microwave background (cmb) anisotropy but only if the inflaton field variation is at least of order the Planck scale. Such a large…
We consider the effective mass-squared in the early Universe, of a scalar field which has only Planck-suppressed couplings with light fields and whose true mass is less than the Hubble parameter $H$. A detailed investigation shows that the…
Light scalar fields with only gravitational strength couplings are typically present in UV complete theories of physics beyond the Standard Model. In the early universe it is natural for these fields to dominate the energy density, and…
We discuss the evolution of cosmological magnetic fields from the early universe to the present. We review different scenarios for magnetogenesis in the early universe and follow the subsequent evolution of these fields as the universe…
In broad classes of inflationary models the period of accelerated expansion is followed by fragmentation of the inflaton scalar field into localized, long-lived and massive oscillon excitations. We demonstrate that matter-dominance of…
Thermal fluctuations in the early universe plasma and in very hot astrophysical objects are an unavoidable source of gravitational waves (GW). Differently from previous studies on the subject, we approach this problem using methods based on…
The gravitino may well play an important role in cosmology, not only because its interactions are Planck-suppressed and therefore long-lived, but also because it is copiously produced via various processes such as particle scatterings in…
We argue that the observed large-scale cosmic microwave anomalies, discovered by WMAP and confirmed by the Planck satellite, are most naturally explained in the context of a marginally-open universe. Particular focus is placed on the dipole…
Parametric resonances provide a mechanism by which particles can be created just after inflation. Thus far, attention has focused on a single or many inflaton fields coupled to a single scalar field. However, generically we expect the…
Graviton-photon oscillation is the conversion of gravitational waves to electromagnetic waves and vice versa in the presence of a background electromagnetic field. We investigate this phenomenon in a cosmological scenario considering a…
The magnetic fields we observe in galaxies today may have their origins in the very early universe. While a number of mechanisms have been proposed which lead to an appreciable field amplitude at early times, the subsequent evolution of the…
In this work it is investigated if fermionic sources could be responsible for accelerated periods during the evolution of a universe where a matter field would answer for the decelerated period. The self-interaction potential of the…
It is shown that quantum fluctuations due to a nontrivial gravitational background in the flat radiation dominated universe can play an important cosmological role generating nonvanishing cosmological global charge, e.g. baryon number,…
The observed galactic magnetic fields may have a primordial origin. I briefly review the observations, their interpretation in terms of the dynamo theory, and the current limits on cosmological magnetic fields. Several possible mechanisms…
It is well-known that first order phase transitions in the early universe can be a powerful source of observable stochastic gravitational wave backgrounds. Any such gravitational wave background must exhibit large-scale anisotropies at…
Cosmological perturbations of massive higher-spin fields are generated during inflation, but they decay on scales larger than the Hubble radius as a consequence of the Higuchi bound. By introducing suitable couplings to the inflaton field,…
For variable gravity models the strength of gravity, as measured by Newton's ``constant'' or the Planck mass, depends on the value of a scalar field, the cosmon. We discuss two simple four-parameter models with a quadratic or constant…