Related papers: Limits on the gravity wave contribution to microwa…
We revisit the possibility of producing observable tensor modes through a continuous particle production process during inflation. Particularly, we focus on the multi-field realization of inflation where a spectator pseudo-scalar $\sigma$…
Anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background radiation due to gravity waves are investigated. An initial spectrum of gravity waves may have been induced during an epoch of inflation. We study the propagation of such a spectrum in a…
The recent COBE measurement of anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background and the recent South Pole experiment of Gaier {\it et al.} offer an excellent opportunity to probe cosmological theories. We test a class of theories in which…
Recent cosmological observations hint at a deviation from the simple power-law form of the primordial spectrum of curvature perturbations. In this paper we show that in the presence of a tensor component, a turn-over in the initial spectrum…
It is shown that a tensor-to-scalar ratio close to r = 0.03, which can be observed by Planck, is realized in supersymmetric hybrid inflation models with TeV-scale soft supersymmetry breaking terms. This extends our previous analysis, which…
Recently, we have shown that scalar spectra with lower power on large scales and certain other features naturally occur in {\it punctuated inflation}, i.e. the scenario wherein a brief period of rapid roll is sandwiched between two stages…
Detailed study of the scalar and tensor perturbation spectra can provide much information about the primordial fluctuation-generator, be it inflation or something else. The tensor perturbation spectrum may be observable through its…
In the approach of the effective field theory of modified gravity, we derive the second-order action and the equation of motion for tensor perturbations on the flat isotropic cosmological background. This analysis accommodates a wide range…
Inflation predicts specific relations between the amplitudes and spectral indices of the primordial spectrum of density (scalar metric) perturbations and gravitational waves (tensor metric perturbations). Detection of a stochastic…
We investigate the extent to which the Swampland Conjecture can be employed to constrain large-field inflationary models from the perspective of quantum gravity consistency. In particular, we focus on the Swampland Distance Conjecture,…
Fluctuations in the intensity and polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) and the large-scale distribution of matter in the universe each contain clues about the nature of the earliest moments of time. The next generation of…
We demonstrate that the strict upper bounds on the energy scale of inflation and on the tensor-to-scalar ratio can be somewhat relaxed if we assume that - after an initial period of slow rolling when scales probed today in CMB experiments…
We study the phenomenological constraints on a recently proposed model of open inflation in the context of induced gravity. The main interest of this model is the relatively small number of parameters, which may be constrained by many…
We make a joint analysis of BICEP2 and recently released Planck HFI 353 GHz dust polarization data, and find that there is no evidence for the primordial gravitational waves and the bound on the tensor-to-scalar ratio becomes $r<0.083$ at…
We demonstrate that "natural inflation", also known as "axion inflation", can be compatible with Planck 2018 measurements of the cosmic microwave background, while predicting an exponentially small tensor-to-scalar ratio, e.g., $r\sim…
I discuss constraints on the power spectrum of primordial tensor perturbations from a combination of Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) measurements and the gravitational wave direct detection experiments LIGO/Virgo and DECIGO. There are two…
Generically, the gravitational-wave or tensor-mode contribution to the primordial curvature spectrum of inflation is tiny if the field-range of the inflaton is much smaller than the Planck scale. We show that this pessimistic conclusion is…
Recently observational lower bounds on the strength of cosmic magnetic fields were reported, based on gamma-ray flux from distant blazars. If inflation is responsible for the generation of such magnetic fields then the inflation energy…
Anisotropies in the temperature of the cosmic microwave background have been detected on a range of scales by several different experiments. These anisotropies reflect the primordial spectrum of metric perturbations in the early universe.…
We consider the effects of the quantum stress tensor fluctuations of a conformal field in generating gravity waves in inflationary models. We find a non-scale invariant, non-Gaussian contribution which depends upon the total expansion…