Related papers: Enhancing the tensor-to-scalar ratio in simple inf…
It is well known that in manifestly Lorentz invariant theories with nontrivial kinetic terms, perturbations around some classical backgrounds can travel faster than light. These exotic "supersonic" models may have interesting consequences…
If inflation was preceded by a radiation era then at the time of inflation there will exist a decoupled thermal distribution of gravitons. Gravitational waves generated during inflation will be amplified by the process of stimulated…
Inflation creates both scalar (density) and tensor (gravity wave) metric perturbations. We find that the tensor mode contribution to the CMB anisotropy on large-angular scales can only exceed that of the scalar mode in models where the…
It is plausible that the scalar density perturbations are created by a relatively low scale model of inflation which predicts the CMB anisotropy and excites Standard Model baryon and cold dark matter, but negligible gravity waves.…
We investigate the possibility that the amplitude of scalar density perturbations may be damped after inflation. This would imply that CMB anisotropies do not uniquely fix the amplitude of the perturbations generated during inflation and…
Recent measurements of temperature fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) indicate that the Universe is flat and that large-scale structure grew via gravitational infall from primordial adiabatic perturbations. Both of these…
In standard inflationary cosmology, scalar and tensor perturbations grew as the Universe expanded and froze when their wavelengths exceeded the Hubble horizon, producing a tell-tale signature in the fluctuation spectrum and amplitude of the…
We consider the impact of thermal inflation -- a short, secondary period of inflation that can arise in supersymmetric scenarios -- on the stochastic gravitational wave background. We show that while the primordial inflationary…
We show that a detectable tensor-to-scalar ratio $(r\ge 10^{-3})$ on the CMB scale can be generated even during extremely low energy inflation which saturates the BBN bound $\rho_{\rm inf}\approx (30 {\rm MeV})^4$. The source of the…
We study the large scale power spectrum of gravitational wave perturbations of the microwave background in the context of single-bubble open inflation models. We compute the ratio of tensor to scalar contributions to the CMB anisotropies as…
Power spectra always play an important role in the theory of inflation. In particular, the ability to reproduce the galaxy matter power spectrum and the CMB temperature angular power spectrum coefficients to high accuracy is often…
In single-field, slow-roll inflationary models, scalar and tensorial (Gaussian) perturbations are both characterized by a zero mean and a non-zero variance. In position space, the corresponding variance of those fields diverges in the…
We review the prospects for detecting tensor modes generated during inflation by CMB polarization experiments and by searching for a stochastic gravitational wave background with laser interferometers in space. We tackle the following two…
We study a model of inflation where the scalar perturbations are almost gaussian while there is sizable (equilateral) nongaussianity in the tensor sector. In this model, a rolling pseudoscalar gravitationally coupled to the inflaton…
We consider a cosmological model in which the tensor mode becomes massive during inflation, and study the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) temperature and polarization bispectra arising from the mixing between the scalar mode and the…
We revisit alternative mechanisms of gravitational wave production during inflation and argue that they generically emit a non-negligible amount of scalar fluctuations. We find the scalar power is larger than the tensor power by a factor of…
Recently, we have shown that scalar spectra with lower power on large scales and certain other features naturally occur in {\it punctuated inflation}, i.e. the scenario wherein a brief period of rapid roll is sandwiched between two stages…
We consider a novel contribution to the polarization of the Cosmic Microwave Background induced by vector and tensor modes generated by the non-linear evolution of primordial scalar perturbations. Our calculation is based on relativistic…
If observations confirm BICEP2's claim of a tensor-scalar ratio $r\approx 0.2$ on CMB scales, then the inflationary consistency relation $n_{t}=-r/8$ predicts a small negative value for the tensor spectral index $n_t$. We show that future…
We study how direct detection of the inflationary gravitational wave background constrains inflationary parameters and complements CMB polarization measurements. The error ellipsoids calculated using the Fisher information matrix approach…