Related papers: The Inflationary Energy Scale
It has recently been suggested that Planck scale physics may effect the evolution of cosmological fluctuations in the early stages of cosmological inflation in a non-trivial way, leading to an excited state for modes whose wavelength is…
Inflation is a bold and expansive extension of the Standard Cosmology. It holds the promise to extend our understanding of the Universe to within 10^{-32}sec of the big bang and answer most of the pressing questions in cosmology. Its…
We re-examine the gravitational wave background resulting from inflation and its effect on the cosmic microwave background radiation. The new COBE measurement of a cosmic background quadrupole anisotropy places an upper limit on the vacuum…
In this paper we investigate a model of an inflationary universe in Kaluza-Klein theory, which is a four-dimensional de Sitter space plus a one-dimensional compactified internal space. We find that the energy scale for inflation can be…
Inflation predicts the generation of cosmological perturbations. Usually, the power spectra for the scalar and tensor modes are calculated with help of the slow roll approximation. In the case of power law inflation an exact result is…
The prediction of a phase of inflation whose number of e-folds is constrained is an important feature of loop quantum cosmology. This work aims at giving some elementary clarifications on the role of the different hypotheses leading to this…
We show how to constrain inflationary models and reheating by using mixed constraints. In particular we study the physics of the reheating phase after inflation from observational constraints to the inflationary stage. We show that it is…
We derive lower bounds for the Higgs-curvature coupling from vacuum stability during inflation in three inflationary models: quadratic and quartic chaotic inflation, and Starobinsky-like power-law inflation. In contrast to most previous…
We consider the amplification of electromagnetic quantum vacuum fluctuations induced by the presence of metric perturbations at the end of inflation. We obtain the amplitude of the corresponding magnetic fields on super-Hubble scales and…
If the present acceleration of the universe is due to an asymptotically de Sitter universe with small cosmological constant, and the principle of Cosmological Complementarity is valid, then the number of e-foldings during inflation is…
The recent BICEP2 measurement of B-modes in the polarization of the cosmic microwave background suggests that inflation was driven by a field at an energy scale of $2\times 10^{16}$ GeV. I explore the potential of upcoming CMB polarization…
The theory of inflation provides a mechanism to explain the structures we observe today in the Universe, starting from quantum-mechanically generated fluctuations. However, this leaves the question of: how did the quantum-to-classical…
Reheating is a transition era after the end of inflation, during which the inflaton is converted into the particles that populate the Universe at later times. No direct cosmological observables are normally traceable to this period of…
We derive the implications for anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background following from a model of inflation in which a bare cosmological constant is gradually screened by an infrared process in quantum gravity. The model predicts…
Many, if not most, inflationary models predict the power-law index of the spectrum of density perturbations is close to one, though not precisely equal to one, |n-1| \sim O(0.1), implying that the spectrum of density perturbations is…
Using the fact that we only observe those modes which exit the Hubble horizon during inflation, one can calculate the entanglement entropy of such long-wavelength perturbations by tracing out unobservable sub-Hubble fluctuations they are…
A new family of inflationary models is introduced and analysed. The behaviour of the parameters characterising the models suggest preferred values, which generate the most interesting testable predictions. Results are further improved if…
When Inflation is embedded in a fundamental theory, such as string theory, it typically begins when the Universe is already substantially larger than the fundamental scale [such as the one defined by the string length scale]. This is…
An inflationary scenario that leads to $\Omega _0<1$ today is presented. An epoch of `old' inflation during which the smoothness and horizon problems are solved is followed by a shortened epoch of `new' inflation. Old inflation exits…
In this thesis we will primarily demonstrate how additional scalar degrees of freedom - which are motivated from many high-energy embeddings - open up new observational windows onto the physics of inflation. We construct a Bayesian…