Related papers: On the Problem of Predicting Inflationary Perturba…
Inflationary cosmology proposes that the early Universe undergoes accelerated expansion, driven, in simple scenarios, by a single scalar field, or inflaton. The form of the inflaton potential determines the initial spectra of density…
This article investigates the predictions of an inflationary phase starting from a homogeneous and anisotropic universe of the Bianchi I type. After discussing the evolution of the background spacetime, focusing on the number of e-folds and…
If the expansion of the early Universe was not close to de Sitter, the statistical imprints of the primordial density perturbation on the cosmic microwave background can be quite different from those derived in slow-roll inflation. In this…
The problems of attempting inflationary model-building in a theory containing a dilaton are explained. In particular, I study the shape of the dilaton potential today and during inflation, based on a weakly-coupled heterotic string model…
The relationship between inflation and predictors such as unemployment is potentially nonlinear with a strength that varies over time, and prediction errors error may be subject to large, asymmetric shocks. Inspired by these concerns, we…
We present a series of theoretical constraints on the potentially viable inflation models that might yield a blue spectrum for primordial tensor perturbations. By performing a detailed dynamical analysis we show that, while there exists…
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…
I examine the standard formalism of calculating curvature perturbations in inflation at horizon crossing, and derive a general relation which must be satisfied for the horizon crossing formalism to be valid. This relation is satisfied for…
We present a detailed study of the trispectrum of the curvature perturbation generated within a stable, well defined and predictive theory which comprises an inflationary phase. In this model the usual shift symmetry is enhanced up to the…
Inflationary perturbations are approximately Gaussian and deviations from Gaussianity are usually calculated using in-in perturbation theory. This method, however, fails for unlikely events on the tail of the probability distribution: in…
We consider a universe in which inflation commences because of a positive cosmological constant, the effect of which is progressively screened by the interaction between virtual gravitons that become trapped in the expansion of spacetime.…
We examine the calculation of density perturbation at large scales in the inflationary scenario. The formula for its magnitude is reviewed from first principles and applied to the original model of extended inflation. Our estimate is an…
We use a numerical code for accurate computation of the amplitude of linear density perturbations and gravitational waves generated by single-field inflation models to study the accuracy of existing analytic results based on the slow-roll…
We study anisotropic cosmologies of a scalar field interacting with an SU(2) gauge field via a gauge-kinetic coupling. We analyze Bianchi class A models, which include Bianchi type I, II, VI0, VII0, VIII and IX. The linear stability of…
The viability of a given model for inflation is determined not only by the form of the inflaton potential, but also by the initial inflaton field configuration. In many models, field configurations which are otherwise well-motivated…
We report on a new class of fast-roll inflationary models. In a huge part of its parameter space, inflationary perturbations exhibit quite unusual phenomena such as scalar and tensor modes freezing out at widely different times, as well as…
In this paper, we present a non-Gaussianity consistency relation that enables the calculation of the squeezed limit bispectrum of the curvature perturbation in single-field inflationary models by carefully inspecting the background…
We study the impact of (generalized) cuscuton models on standard single scalar field inflation. Generalized cuscuton models are characterized by spatial covariant gravity where a scalar degree of freedom is made non dynamical, and there are…
We show that the prediction for the primordial tensor power spectrum cannot be modified at leading order in derivatives. Indeed, one can always set to unity the speed of propagation of gravitational waves during inflation by a suitable…
The inflationary paradigm is extremely successful regarding predictions of temperature anisotropies in the CMB. However, inflation also makes predictions for a CMB B-mode polarization, which has not been detected. Moreover, the standard…