Related papers: Inflation at the Electroweak Scale
At the level of heuristic effective dynamics, we investigate the cosmological inflation with holonomy corrections of loop quantum cosmology (LQC) in the $k=0$ Friedmann-Robertson-Walker model with a single inflaton field subject to a simple…
Extrapolating the Standard Model Higgs potential at high energies, we study the barrier between the electroweak and Planck scale minima. The barrier arises by taking the central values of the relevant experimental inputs, that is the strong…
We reconsider the problems of cosmological inflation in effective supergravity theories. A singlet field in a hidden sector is demonstrated to yield an acceptable inflationary potential, without fine tuning. In the simplest such model, the…
In this paper we investigate the vacuum stability of the non-minimally coupled Standard-Model Higgs during a phase of kinetic domination following the end of inflation. The non-minimal coupling to curvature stabilises the Higgs fluctuations…
We reconsider the toy-model of topological inflation, based on the R*4-modified gravity. By using its equivalence to the certain scalar-tensor gravity model in four space-time dimensions, we compute the inflaton scalar potential and…
The present measurement of the standard model (SM) parameters suggests that the Higgs effective potential has a maximum at the intermediate scale, and the electroweak (EW) vacuum is not absolutely stable. The simplest possibility for…
In this paper we present a simple argument that shows a non-singular bouncing cosmology naturally yields an era of super-inflation which can precede the phase of normal potential driven inflation. One of the consequences of a…
The end of a thermal inflation era, driven by the rolling of a flaton field coupled to the curvaton, cause a huge increment in the curvaton mass and decay rate while the curvaton is still frozen. It is shown that, if this increment is…
We investigate to which extent and under which circumstances false vacuum energy ($V_0$) dominated slow-roll inflation is compatible with a large tensor-to-scalar ratio $r = O(0.1)$, as indicated by the recent BICEP2 measurement. With $V_0$…
Quantum gravitational back-reaction offers the potential of simultaneously resolving the problem of the cosmological constant and providing a natural model of inflation in which scalars play no special role. In this model inflation begins…
We develop a quantum-cosmological framework in which the inflationary potential emerges from the structure of the wave function of the universe rather than being postulated. Starting from the Wheeler-DeWitt equation for a flat…
We consider the torsional completion of gravity with spinor and scalar fields: we show how in this environment conditions of extreme symmetry or specific approximations imply the scalar field to be constant, so that slow-roll takes place…
It is shown that a large class of higher-order (i.e. non-quadratic) scalar kinetic terms can, without the help of potential terms, drive an inflationary evolution starting from rather generic initial conditions. In many models, this…
We propose a model for early universe cosmology without the need for fundamental scalar fields. Cosmic acceleration and phenomenologically viable reheating of the universe results from a series of energy transitions, where during each…
In the quest for unification of the Standard Model with gravity, classical scale invariance can be utilized to dynamically generate the Planck mass $M_\mathrm{Pl}$. Then, the relation of Planck scale physics to the scale of electroweak…
Bulk viscosity leads to negative pressure, which is a key ingredient for successful inflation. We build an inflationary model where the slow-roll of the inflaton field is driven by a viscous component instead of the flat potential commonly…
The supersymmetric model of hybrid inflation is interesting not only because of its naturalness but also because of another reason. Its energy scale determined by the COBE normalization is 10^15 - 10^16 GeV. It happens to be the energy…
Motivated by natural inflation, we propose a relaxation mechanism consistent with inflationary cosmology that explains the hierarchy between the electroweak scale and Planck scale. This scenario is based on a selection mechanism that…
We consider inflation and supersymmetry breaking in the context of a minimal model of supersymmetry in which the only "low" energy remnant of supersymmetry is the gravitino with a mass of order an EeV. In this theory, the supersymmetry…
In this paper we investigate the asymptotic dynamics of inflationary cosmological models that are based in scalar-tensor theories of gravity. Our main aim is to explore the global structure of the phase space in the framework of…