Related papers: Near Scale Invariance with Modified Dispersion Rel…
We study inflationary scenarios driven by a scalar field in the presence of a non-minimal coupling between matter and curvature. We show that the Friedmann equation can be significantly modified when the energy density during inflation…
We present a bouncing cosmology which evolves from the contracting to the expanding phase in a smooth way, without developing instabilities or pathologies and remaining in the regime of validity of 4d effective field theory. A nearly scale…
We study the spectrum of primordial fluctuations in theories where the inflaton field is coupled to massless fields and/or to itself. Conformally invariant theories generically predict a scale invariant spectrum. Scales entering the theory…
A disformal coupling between two scalar fields is considered in the context of cosmological inflation. The coupling introduces novel derivative interactions mixing the kinetic terms of the fields but without introducing superluminal or…
The effective theory of adiabatic fluctuations around arbitrary Friedmann-Robertson-Walker backgrounds - both expanding and contracting - allows for more than one way to obtain scale-invariant two-point correlations. However, as we show in…
Comparisons of cosmological models to current data show that the presence of a non-trivial feature in the primordial power spectrum of fluctuations, around the scale k=0.05 h/Mpc, is an open and exciting possibility, testable in a near…
The effective field theory (EFT) of inflation provides a natural framework to study the new physical effects on primordial perturbations. Recently a healthy extension of the EFT of inflation with high-order operators has been proposed,…
We apply the effective field theory approach to quasi-single field inflation, which contains an additional scalar field with Hubble scale mass other than inflaton. Based on the time-dependent spatial diffeomorphism, which is not broken by…
Four-dimensional optics leverages the simultaneous control of materials in space and time to manipulate light. A key challenge in experimentally realizing many intriguing phenomena is the need for rapid modulation, which is hindered by the…
We remark on the existence of non-linearly realized conformal symmetries for scalar adiabatic perturbations in cosmology. These conformal symmetries are present for any cosmological background, beyond any slow-roll or quasi-de Sitter…
We reconsider fluctuations of Affleck-Dine (AD) field in a D-term inflation model. Contrary to the previous analysis, we find that the spectrum of the adiabatic fluctuations is almost scale invariant even if the AD field has a large initial…
We study the dynamics and predictions of a new emergent-universe model recently derived within Quantum Reduced Loop Gravity and based on the so-called statistical regularization scheme. These effective geometries show a dynamical transition…
Standard inflation with one scalar field produces primordial perturbations with a nearly flat ('Harrison-Zeldovich') power spectrum. Here we consider first, a double inflation spectrum, and second, a massive scalar field with an interaction…
We recently proposed a simple dilaton-derived quintessence model in which the scalar field was non-minimally coupled to cold dark matter, but not to `visible' matter. Such couplings can be attributed to the dilaton in the low energy limit…
We calculate the scalar spectral index $n_s$ and the tensor-to-scalar ratio $r$ in a class of recently proposed two-field no-scale inflationary models in supergravity. We show that, in order to obtain correct predictions, it is crucial to…
We study the primordial perturbations generated during a stage of single-field inflation in Einstein-aether theories. Quantum fluctuations of the inflaton and aether fields seed long wavelength adiabatic and isocurvature scalar…
We investigate the relation between dilatation and conformal symmetries in the statistical mechanics of flexible crystalline membranes. We analyze, in particular, a well-known model which describes the fluctuations of a continuum elastic…
We study multifield contributions to the scalar power spectrum in an ensemble of six-field inflationary models obtained in string theory. We identify examples in which inflation occurs by chance, near an approximate inflection point, and we…
We revisit the issue on signatures of pre-inflationary background anisotropy by considering the quantization of a massless and minimally coupled scalar field in an axially symmetric Kasner background, mimicking cosmological perturbations.…
We develop a covariant method for studying the effects of a reheating phase on the primordial adiabatic and isocurvature perturbations in two-field models of inflation. To model the decay of the scalar fields into radiation at the end of…