Related papers: Assisted inflation
We study an inflationary model driven by a single minimally coupled standard kinetic term scalar field with a step in its mass modeled by an Heaviside step function. We present an analytical approximation for the mode function of the…
Recent years have seen the introduction of various multi-field inflationary scenarios in which the curvature and geodesics of the scalar manifold play a crucial role. We outline a simple description that unifies these different proposals…
Recently, attempts have been made to understand the apparent near coincidence of the present dark energy and matter energy in terms of a dynamical attractor-like solution for the evolution of a scalar field. In these models the field…
We consider the dynamics of a multi-component scalar field on super-horizon scales in the context of inflationary cosmology. We present a method to solve the perturbation equations on super- horizon scales, i.e., in the long wavelength…
The motion of a pseudo-scalar field $X$ during inflation naturally induces a significant amplification of the gauge fields to which it is coupled. The amplified gauge fields can source characteristic scalar and tensor primordial…
In effective supergravity theories following from the superstring, a modulus field can quite naturally set the neccessary initial conditions for successful cosmological inflation to be driven by a hidden sector scalar field. The leading…
The amplitude and spectrum of the scalar and tensor perturbations depend upon the shape of the inflationary potential in the small interval where the scalar field responsible for inflation was between about 46 and 54 e-folds before the end…
Solid inflation is a cosmological model where inflation is driven by fields which enter the Lagrangian in the same way as body coordinates of a solid matter enter the equation of state, spontaneously breaking spatial translational and…
The BICEP2 observations, if confirmed, point to a high scale of inflation and large field excursions during the inflationary era. Non-compact string moduli spaces are a suggestive setting for these phenomena. While unlikely to be described…
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…
Results of a general study on the dynamics of cosmological scalar fields with arbitrary potentials are presented. Exact and approximate attractor solutions are found, with applications to quintessence, moduli stabilization and inflation.
We present two families of multi-field potentials that support inflation while satisfying the refined de Sitter and the distance swampland conjectures. Both families feature Planck-compatible phenomenology. The first is a helix-type…
It has been argued that oscillatory features from spectator fields in the primordial power spectrum could be a probe of alternatives to inflation. In this work, we soften this claim by showing that the frequency and amplitude dependence of…
An exact inhomogeneous solution of Einstein's field equations is shown to be able to inflate in a non-uniform way in the early universe and explain anomalies in the WMAP power spectrum data. It is also possible for the model to explain the…
We propose an inflationary scenario, M-flation, in which inflation is driven by three $N\times N$ hermitian matrices $\Phi_i, i=1,2,3$. The inflation potential of our model, which is strongly motivated from string theory, is constructed…
We calculate the scalar spectral index $n_s$ and the tensor-to-scalar ratio $r$ in a class of recently proposed two-field no-scale inflationary models in supergravity. We show that, in order to obtain correct predictions, it is crucial to…
In this article, we study in detail the linear dynamics and cubic interactions for any number $N_\mathrm{field}$ of scalar fields during inflation, directly in terms of the observable curvature perturbation $\zeta$ and $N_\mathrm{field}-1$…
The effective field theory (EFT) of inflation provides a natural framework to study the new physical effects on primordial perturbations. Recently a healthy extension of the EFT of inflation with high-order operators has been proposed,…
We study the two-field warm inflation models with a double quadratic potential and a linear temperature dependent dissipative coefficient. We derived the evolution equation of all kinds of perturbations without assuming slow-roll…
We discuss a new mechanism to enhance the spectrum of primordial tensor fluctuations in single field inflationary scenarios. The enhancement relies on a transitory non-attractor inflationary phase, which amplifies the would-be decaying…