Related papers: What does inflation really predict?
Inflation is studied in the context of induced gravity (IG) $\gamma \sigma^2 R$, where $R$ is the Ricci scalar, $\sigma$ a scalar field and $\gamma$ a dimensionless constant, and diverse symmetry-breaking potentials $V(\sigma)$ are…
After inflation, a period of preheating may have produced a stochastic background of high frequency gravitational waves (GWs) that would persist until today. The nature of the inflaton's coupling to Standard Model or other fields is…
Bursts of particle production during inflation provide a well-motivated mechanism for creating bump like features in the primordial power spectrum. Current data constrains these features to be less than about 5% the size of the featureless…
We emphasize that the estimation of cosmological parameters from cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropy data, such as the recent high resolution maps from BOOMERanG and MAXIMA-1, requires assumptions about the primordial spectra. The…
The inflationary phase of the Universe is explored by proposing a toy model related to the scalar field, termed as {\it inflaton}. The potential part of the energy density in the said era is assumed to have a constant vacuum energy density…
We have developed a precise dictionary between the spectrum of primordial density fluctuations and the parameters of the effective field theory (EFT) of inflation that determine the primordial power spectrum (PPS). At lowest order the EFT…
We confront the warm inflation observational predictions directly with the latest CMB data. We focus on a linear temperature (T) dissipative coefficient combined with the simplest model of inflation, a quartic chaotic potential. Although…
In the ``natural inflation'' model, the inflaton potential is periodic. We show that Planck scale physics may induce corrections to the inflaton potential, which is also periodic with a greater frequency. Such high frequency corrections…
Two extensions of ideas lying in the basis of the inflationary scenario of the early Universe and their effect on the large scale structure of the present-day Universe are discussed. The first of them is the possibility of fast phase…
Inflation occurring at energy densities less than (10$^{14}$ GeV)$^4$ produces tensor perturbations too small to be measured by cosmological surveys. However, we show that it is possible to probe low scale inflation by measuring the mass of…
We construct a new model of quintessential $\alpha$ attractor inflation in conjunction with the features of non-oscillating early dark energy (EDE). Slow-roll plateau of this model is obtained, and analyzed in $k$-space, through the…
We consider a minimal scale-invariant extension of the Standard Model of particle physics combined with Unimodular Gravity formulated in \cite{Shaposhnikov:2008xb}. This theory is able to describe not only an inflationary stage, related to…
The curvaton scenario for the generation of the cosmological curvature perturbation on large scales represents an alternative to the standard slow-roll scenario of inflation in which the observed density perturbations are due to…
We find the best-fit cosmological parameters for a scenario of inflation with only the sufficient amount of accelerated expansion for the $\lambda\phi^4$ potential. While for the simplest scenario of chaotic inflation all observable…
In this paper we consider inflation as a probe of new physics near the string or Planck scale. We discuss how new physics can be captured by the choice of vacuum, and how this leads to modifications of the primordial spectrum as well as the…
We study inflation driven by a scalar potential arising from composite-sector dynamics, inspired by generalized composite Higgs models. The introduction of a non-minimal coupling, possessing the same functional form as the potential,…
We investigate the probability of obtaining an observable curvature perturbation, using as an example the minimal curvaton-higgs (MCH) model. We determine 'probably observable' and 'probably excluded' regions of parameter space assuming…
We point out that the prediction of the minimal chaotic inflation model is altered if a scalar field takes a large field value close to the Planck scale during inflation due to a negative Hubble induced mass. In particular, we show that the…
I present a brief review of astro-ph/0406099, which argues that there is a limit on the number of efolds of inflation which are observable in a universe which undergoes an eternally accelerated expansion in the future. Such an acceleration…
An inflationary scenario that leads to $\Omega _0<1$ today is presented. An epoch of `old' inflation during which the smoothness and horizon problems are solved is followed by a shortened epoch of `new' inflation. Old inflation exits…