Related papers: First Order Inflation in General Relativity
A general approach to viable modified $f(R)$ gravity is developed in both the Jordan and the Einstein frames. A class of exponential, realistic modified gravities is introduced and investigated with care. Special focus is made on step-class…
Recent developments in cosmology suggest that much of the universe is in a state of explosive, accelerated expansion, called inflation. We live in a "bubble" where inflation has ended, and other bubbles with diverse properties are…
We argue that the presence of an inflationary epoch is a natural, almost unavoidable, consequence of the existence of a sensible effective action involving an infinite tower of higher-curvature corrections to the Einstein-Hilbert action. No…
We review some theoretical and statistical aspects of the origin of the large-scale structure in the Universe, in view of the two most widely known and accepted scenarios: the inflaton and the curvaton scenarios. Among the theoretical…
While cosmological inflation can erase primordial inhomogeneities, it is possible that inflation may not begin in a significantly inhomogeneous universe. This issue is particularly pressing in multifield scenarios, where even the…
Hybrid inflation is a natural scenario in the absence of supersymmetry. In the context of supergravity, however, it has to face the naturalness problems of the initial conditions and of the adequate suppression of the inflaton mass. Both…
Inflation is known to be generically eternal to the future: the false vacuum is thermalized in some regions of space, while inflation continues in other regions. Here, we address the question of whether inflation can also be eternal to the…
We present a detailed discussion of the inflationary scenario in the context of inhomogeneous cosmologies. After a review of the fundamental features characterizing the inflationary model, as referred to a homogeneous and isotropic…
We have explicitly demonstrated that scalar coupled Gauss-Bonnet gravity in four dimension can have non-trivial effects on the early inflationary stage of our universe. In particular, we have shown that the scalar coupled Gauss-Bonnet term…
Inflation, as currently understood, requires the presence of fields with very flat potentials. Supersymmetric models in which supersymmetry breaking is communicated by supergravity naturally yield such fields, but the scales are typically…
Starobinsky has suggested an inflation model which is obtained from the vacuum Einstein's equations modified by the one-loop corrections due to quantized matter fields. Although the one-loop gravitational action is not known for a general…
Variation of constants in the very early universe can generate inflation. We consider a scenario where the strong coupling constant was changing in time and where the gluon condensate underwent a phase transition ending the inflation.
We propose a model of inflation with a suitable potential for a single scalar field which falls in the wide class of hilltop inflation. We derive the analytical expressions for most of the physical quantities related to inflation and show…
We present first results from a novel numerical relativity code based on a tetrad formulation of the Einstein-scalar field equations combined with recently introduced gauge/frame invariant diagnostics indicating that inflation does not…
The trace-free version of the Einstein Gravitational equations, essentially equivalent to unimodular gravity, can solve the troubling issue of the huge discrepancy between quantum field theory estimates of the vacuum energy density and 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…
The pre-big-bang cosmology inspired by superstring theories has been suggested as an alternative to slow-roll inflation. We analyze, in both the Jordan and Einstein frames, the effect of spatial curvature on this scenario and show that too…
We explore the production of gravitational waves (GW) resulting from a first-order phase transition (FOPT) in a non-minimally coupled `Dark Higgs Inflation' model. Utilizing a dark sector scalar field as the inflaton, we demonstrate how…
During inflation, primordial energy density fluctuations are created from approximate de Sitter vacuum quantum fluctuations redshifted out of the horizon after which they are frozen as perturbations in the background curvature. In this…
This paper is based on a talk given by A R Liddle at the PASCOS/TEXAS meeting in December 1992, and will appear in the proceedings. The central result is that all known models of inflation which end in a first order phase transition can be…