Related papers: Pre-inflation models and WMAP data
Inflation predicts the generation of cosmological perturbations. Usually, the power spectra for the scalar and tensor modes are calculated with help of the slow roll approximation. In the case of power law inflation an exact result is…
We investigate the inflationary expansion of the universe induced by higher curvature corrections in M-theory. The inflationary evolution of the geometry is discussed in ref.[1], thus we succeed to analyse metric perturbations around the…
When a light scalar field is present during inflation, its value will vary on superhorizon scales, modulating the preheating process at the end of inflation. Consequently, the amplitude of the gravitational wave (GW) background produced…
Measurements of CMB temperature fluctuations by the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) indicate that the fluctuation amplitude in one half of the sky differs from the amplitude in the other half. We show that such an asymmetry…
We explore the effect of initial conditions on the inflationary wavefunction and their consequences for the observed spectrum of primordial fluctuations. In a class of models with a sudden transition into inflation we find that, for a…
I discuss how parameters describing inflation in the very early universe may be related to primordial perturbation spectra. Precision observations of anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) such as those provided by the WMAP…
In this work we explore the possibility of variations in the primordial scalar power spectrum around the power-law shape, as predicted by single-field slow-roll inflationary scenarios. We search for the trace of these fluctuations in a…
Slow-roll inflation generically makes several predictions: a flat Universe, primordial adiabatic density perturbations, and a stochastic gravity-wave background. Each inflation model will further predict specific relations between the…
A short introduction to structure formation is given, followed by a discussion of the possible characteristics of the initial perturbations assuming a generic inflationary origin. Observational data related to large-scale structure and the…
The Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) constraints on string inspired ''brane inflation'' are investigated. Here, the inflaton field is interpreted as the distance between two branes placed in a flux-enriched background geometry…
We investigate the evolution of the non-linear long wavelength fluctuations during preheating after inflation. By using the separate universe approach, the temporal evolution of the power spectrum of the scalar fields and the curvature…
The impact of particle production during inflation on the primordial curvature perturbation spectrum is investigated both analytically and numerically. We obtain an oscillatory behavior on small scales, while on large scales the spectrum is…
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…
Since this is a meeting on inflation the title of this talk should probably have been ``The cosmos as a lab for inflation''. I will illustrate how, by combining WMAP observations of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) with smaller scales…
We propose a scenario where preheating occurs for a specific duration that is parametrized by an e-folds number $N_{pre}$, our results suggest a direct correlation between the preheating duration and the density of gravitational waves (GWs)…
Solid inflation can support a long period of anisotropic inflation. We calculate the statistical anisotropies in the scalar and tensor power spectra and their cross-correlation in anisotropic solid inflation. The tensor-scalar…
Chain Inflation is an alternative to slow roll inflation in which the universe undergoes a series of transitions between different vacua. The density perturbations (studied in this paper) are seeded by the probabilistic nature of tunneling…
If the large scale anomalies in the temperature power spectrum of the cosmic microwave background are of primordial origin, they may herald modifications to the slow roll inflationary paradigm on the largest scales. We study the possibility…
We discuss the spectrum of scalar density perturbations from warm inflation when the friction coefficient $\Gamma$ in the inflaton equation is dependent on the inflaton field. The spectral index of scalar fluctuations depends on a new…
We study an inflationary model driven by a single minimally coupled standard kinetic term scalar field with a step in its mass modeled by an Heaviside step function. We present an analytical approximation for the mode function of the…