Related papers: A Leading Logarithm Approximation for Inflationary…
This pedagogical review aims at presenting the fundamental aspects of the theory of inflationary cosmological perturbations of quantum-mechanical origin. The analogy with the well-known Schwinger effect is discussed in detail and a…
The Higgs field is an attractive candidate for the inflaton because it is an observationally confirmed fundamental scalar field. Importantly, it can be modeled by the most general renormalizable scalar potential. However, if the classical…
We generalize the Effective Field Theory of Inflation to include additional light scalar degrees of freedom that are in their vacuum at the time the modes of interest are crossing the horizon. In order to make the scalars light in a natural…
We compute the power spectrum of curvature perturbations in stochastic inflation. This combines the distribution of first crossing times through the end-of-inflation surface, which has been previously studied, with the distribution of the…
This article provides an introductory review of inflation and cosmological perturbation theory. I begin by motivating the need for an epoch of inflation during the early stages of the radiation dominated era, and describe how inflation is…
We consider a massive scalar field with quartic self-interaction $\lambda/4!\,\phi^4$ in de~Sitter spacetime and present a diagrammatic expansion that describes the field as driven by stochastic noise. This is compared with the Feynman…
We consider a subclass of Horndeski theories for studying cosmic inflation. In particular, we investigate models of inflation in which the derivative self-interaction of the scalar field and the non-minimal derivative coupling to gravity…
Cosmological perturbations generated during inflation exhibit striking quantum features, including entanglement and high circuit complexity. Yet their observational signatures remain effectively indistinguishable from classical stochastic…
This paper contains a detailed study of the properties of a simple model attempting to explain dark energy as originated from quantum fluctuations of a light spectator scalar field in inflation. In [1] we recently outlined how Starobinsky's…
We present a review on the state-of-the-art of the mathematical framework known as stochastic inflation, paying special attention to its derivation and giving references for the readers interested on results coming from the application of…
Since the standard inflationary paradigm is based on quantum field theory on classical space-times, it excludes the Planck era. Using techniques from loop quantum gravity, the paradigm is extended to a self-consistent theory from the Planck…
Cosmic inflation is arguably the most favoured paradigm of the very early Universe. It postulates an early phase of fast, nearly exponential, and accelerated expansion. Inflationary models are capable of explaining the overall flatness and…
We develop a cosmological model where primordial inflation is driven by a 'solid', defined as a system of three derivatively coupled scalar fields obeying certain symmetries and spontaneously breaking a certain subgroup of these. The…
In this paper a quantum mechanical phase space picture is constructed for coarse-grained free quantum fields in an inflationary Universe. The appropriate stochastic quantum Liouville equation is derived. Explicit solutions for the phase…
The full set of cosmological observables coming from linear scalar and tensor perturbations of loop quantum cosmology is computed in the presence of inverse-volume corrections. Background inflationary solutions are found at linear order in…
Using the Ashtekar-Sen variables of loop quantum gravity, a new class of exact solutions to the equations of quantum cosmology is found for gravity coupled to a scalar field, that corresponds to inflating universes. The scalar field, which…
Quantum gravity, as a fundamental theory of space-time, is expected to reveal how the universe may have started, perhaps during or before an inflationary epoch. It may then leave a potentially observable (but probably minuscule) trace in…
We extend the theory of cosmological perturbations to the case when the ``matter'' Lagrangian is an arbitrary function of the scalar field and its first derivatives. In particular, this extension provides a unified description of known…
We investigate the pre-inflationary dynamics of inflation with the Starobinsky potential, favored by recent data from the Planck mission, using techniques developed to study cosmological perturbations on quantum spacetimes in the framework…
The main aim of this paper is to provide a qualitative introduction to the cosmic inflation and its relationship with current cosmological observations. The inflationary model solves many of the fundamental problems that challenge the…