Related papers: Signals of Inflation in a Friendly String Landscap…
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…
The scale at which supersymmetry is broken and the mechanism by which supersymmetry breaking is fed down to the observable sector has rich implications on the way Nature may have chosen to accomplish inflation. We discuss a simple model for…
We develop our recent suggestion that inflation may be made past eternal, so that there is no initial cosmological singularity or "beginning of time". Inflation with multiple vacua generically approaches a steady-state statistical…
There is increasing evidence from string theory that effective field theories are only reliable over approximately sub-Planckian field excursions. The two most promising effective models for early universe cosmology, inflation and…
We describe a simple mechanism that can lead to inflation within string-based brane-world scenarios. The idea is to start from a supersymmetric configuration with two parallel static Dp-branes, and slightly break the supersymmetry…
The model of Natural Inflation is examined in light of recent 3-year data from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe and shown to provide a good fit. The inflaton potential is naturally flat due to shift symmetries, and in the simplest…
In this paper we will analyze generic predictions of an inflection-point model of inflation with Hubble-induced corrections and study them in light of the Planck data. Typically inflection-point models of inflation can be embedded within…
We study the inflationary perturbations in general (classically) scale-invariant theories. Such scenario is motivated by the hierarchy problem and provides natural inflationary potentials and dark matter candidates. We analyse in detail all…
We describe the general inflationary dynamics that can arise with a single, canonically coupled field where the inflaton potential is a 4-th order polynomial. This scenario yields a wide range of combinations of the empirical spectral…
We investigate the inflationary universe in a theory where two scalar fields non-minimally coupling to the scalar curvature and an extra $R^2$ term exist and the conformal invariance is broken. In particular, the slow-roll inflation is…
The inflationary scenarios suggested by the duality properties of string cosmology in the Brans-Dicke (or String) frame are shown to correspond to accelerated contraction (deflation) when Weyl-transformed to the Einstein frame. We point out…
We find successful models of D-brane/anti-brane inflation within a string context. We work within the GKP-KKLT class of type IIB string vacua for which many moduli are stabilized through fluxes, as recently modified to include `realistic'…
The viability of a given model for inflation is determined not only by the form of the inflaton potential, but also by the initial inflaton field configuration. In many models, field configurations which are otherwise well-motivated…
The BICEP2 observations, if confirmed, point to a high scale of inflation and large field excursions during the inflationary era. Non-compact string moduli spaces are a suggestive setting for these phenomena. While unlikely to be described…
We present a new model of inflation in which the inflaton is the extra component of a gauge field in a 5d theory compactified on a circle. The chief merit of this model is that the potential comes only from non-local effects so that its…
We carry out numerical investigations of the dynamics and perturbations in the Nflation model of Dimopoulos et al. (2005). This model features large numbers of scalar fields with different masses, which can cooperate to drive inflation…
In this work we investigate the inflationary era in the presence of a canonical scalar field and Chern-Simons parity violating corrections. It was also assumed that a non minimal coupling between curvature and the scalar field is present.…
The effect of the initial conditions in inflation on scalar and tensor perturbations is investigated. Formulae for the power spectra of gravitational waves and curvature perturbations for any initial conditions in inflation are derived, and…
We determine the frequency of regions of small-field inflation in the Wigner landscape as an approximation to random supergravities/type IIB flux compactifications. We show that small-field inflation occurs exponentially more often than…
With a scalar field non-minimally coupled to curvature, the underlying geometry and variational principle of gravity - metric or Palatini - becomes important and makes a difference, as the field dynamics and observational predictions…