Related papers: The Tensor Desert
We comprehensively explore the quadratic curvaton models in the chaotic inflation. In the light of the BICEP2 result $r \approx 0.2$, all model parameters and relevant observables are computed. It is found the curvaton field value is…
Despite its importance for modeling the homogeneous hot early universe very little is experimentally known about the magnitude of the reheating temperature, leaving an uncertainty of remarkable 18 orders of magnitude. In this paper we…
Large field inflation models are favored by the recent BICEP2 that has detected gravitational wave modes generated during inflation. We study general large field inflation models for which the potential contains (constant) quadratic and…
The presence of a significant amount of gravitational radiation in the early Universe affects the total energy density and hence the expansion rate in the early epoch. In this work, we develop a physical model to connect the parameter of…
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…
Recent cosmological observations hint at a deviation from the simple power-law form of the primordial spectrum of curvature perturbations. In this paper we show that in the presence of a tensor component, a turn-over in the initial spectrum…
Imposing that the excursion distance of inflaton in field space during inflation be less than the Planck scale, we derive an upper bound on the tensor-to-scalar ratio at the CMB scales, i.e. $r_{*,max}$, in the general canonical…
We consider higher-dimensional uniform inflation, in which the extra dimensions expand at the same rate as three-dimensional non-compact space during inflation. We compute the cosmological perturbation in $D+4$ dimensions and derive the…
The scalar-tensor Dirac-Born-Infeld (DBI) inflation scenario provides a simple mechanism to reduce the large values of the boost factor associated with single field models with DBI action, whilst still being able to drive 60 efolds of…
Using the de Sitter/CFT correspondence we describe a scenario of holographic inflation which is driven by a three dimensional boundary field theory. We find that inflationary constraints severely restrict the $\beta$--function, the…
We consider the running of the spectral index as a probe of both inflation itself, and of the overall evolution of the very early universe. Surveying a collection of simple single field inflationary models, we confirm that the magnitude of…
Tensor modes in the cosmic microwave background are one of the most robust signatures of inflation. We derive theoretical bounds on the tensor fraction, as a generalization of the well-known Lyth bound. Under reasonable assumptions, the new…
We investigate expected constraints on the primordial tensor power spectrum from the future cosmic microwave background polarization experiment LiteBIRD as a test of multi-field inflation. We argue that the measurements of the…
If the Standard Model is valid up to very high energies it is known that the Higgs potential can develop a local minimum at field values around $10^{15}-10^{17}$ GeV, for a narrow band of values of the top quark and Higgs masses. We show…
In Aligned Natural Inflation, an alignment between different potential terms produces an inflaton excursion greater than the axion scales in the potential. We show that, starting from a general potential of two axions with two aligned…
We study a model of inflation with terms quadratic and logarithmic in the Ricci scalar, where the gravitational action is $f(R)=R+\alpha R^2+\beta R^2 \ln R$. These terms are expected to arise from one loop corrections involving matter…
The detection of B-mode power spectrum by the BICEP2 collaboration constrains the tensor-to-scalar ratio $r=0.20^{+0.07}_{-0.05}$ for the lensed-$\Lambda$CDM model. The consistency of this big value with the {\em Planck} results requires a…
We consider the possibility that higher-curvature corrections could drive inflation after the compactification to four dimensions. Assuming that the low-energy limit of the fundamental theory is eleven-dimensional supergravity to the lowest…
We show that if inflation lasted just longer than the required 60 or so e-folds $N$ both scalar and tensor contributions to the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) power spectra are expected to show a cut-off. However the behaviour of the…
We consider the polynomial inflation with the tensor-to-scalar ratio as large as possible which can be consistent with the Quantum Gravity (QG) corrections and Effective Field Theory (EFT). To get a minimal field excursion $\Delta\phi$ for…