Related papers: Inflation in the Postmodern Era

The spectrum of primordial fluctuations from inflation can be obtained using a mathematically controlled, and systematically extendable, uniform approximation. Closed-form expressions for power spectra and spectral indices may be found…

I investigate multi-field inflationary models with fields that decay during inflation, leading to staggered inflation. This feature is natural in many models motivated by string theory, for instance if inflatons are related to interbrane…

I present a brief review of astro-ph/0406099, which argues that there is a limit on the number of efolds of inflation which are observable in a universe which undergoes an eternally accelerated expansion in the future. Such an acceleration…

We present a review on the state-of-the-art of the mathematical framework known as stochastic inflation, paying special attention to its derivation and giving references for the readers interested on results coming from the application of…

Slow-roll inflation generically makes several predictions: a flat Universe, primordial adiabatic density perturbations, and a stochastic gravity-wave background. Each inflation model will further predict specific relations between the…

The formation of structure in the Universe offers some of the most powerful evidence in favour of the existence of dark matter in the Universe. We summarize recent work by ourselves and our collaborators, using linear and quasi-linear…

In inflationary cosmology, the particles constituting the Universe are created after inflation in the process of reheating due to the interaction with the oscillating inflaton field. We briefly review the basics of the slow reheating, and…

Recent developments in inflation model building, based on supersymmetry, have produced compelling models in which strings are produced at the end of inflation. In such models the cosmological perturbations are seeded both by the defects and…

This is a review article for The Review of Particle Physics 2026 (aka the Particle Data Book), appearing as Chapter 23. It forms a compact review of our understanding of cosmological inflation near the end of 2025. Topics included are…

This thesis is dedicated to studying cosmological inflation, which is a period of accelerated expansion in the very early Universe that is required to explain the observed anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background. Inflation, when…

Taking field theory seriously, inflation model-building is difficult but not impossible. The observed value of the spectral index of the adiabatic density perturbation is starting to discriminate between models, and may well pick out a…

Inflation is an early period of accelerated cosmic expansion, thought to be sourced by high energy physics. A key task today is to use the influx of increasingly precise observational data to constrain the plethora of inflationary models…

Lecture notes on covariant linear perturbation theory and its applications to inflation, dark energy or matter and the cosmic microwave background.

At the outbreak of the recent inflation surge, the public's attention to inflation was low but increased quickly once inflation started to rise. In this paper, I quantify when and by how much the public's attention to inflation changes, and…

We investigate the recently proposed hybrid inflation models with two stages of inflation. We show that quantum fluctuations at the time corresponding to the phase transition between the two inflationary stages can trigger the formation of…

We present a technique, {\em the uniform asymptotic approximation}, to construct accurate analytical solutions of the linear perturbations of inflation after quantum effects of the early universe are taken into account, for which the…

Cosmic inflation provides a window to the highest energy densities accessible in nature, far beyond those achievable in any realistic terrestrial experiment. Theoretical insights into the inflationary era and its observational probes may…

We propose a new mechanism to generate density perturbations in inflationary models. Spatial fluctuations in the decay rate of the inflaton field to ordinary matter lead to fluctuations in the reheating temperature. We argue that in most…

The early universe according to the big bang and the grand unified theories is discussed. The shortcomings of big bang are summarized together with their resolution by inflationary cosmology. Inflation, the subsequent oscillation and decay…

The spectrum of inflationary tensor perturbations is one of the very few available probes of the post-inflationary reheating epoch, and it is strongly influenced by the Universe's equation of state during this period. In the current era of…