Related papers: Limits on the gravity wave contribution to microwa…
We analyse the implications of the Planck data for cosmic inflation. The Planck nominal mission temperature anisotropy measurements, combined with the WMAP large-angle polarization, constrain the scalar spectral index to $n_s = 0.9603 \pm…
In order to find the correct theory of quantum gravity, one has to look for observational effects in any candidate theory. Here, we focus on canonical quantum gravity and calculate the quantum-gravitational contributions to the anisotropy…
We discuss the polarization signature of primordial gravitational waves imprinted in cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropies. The high-energy physics motivated by superstring theory or M-theory generically yield parity violating…
The Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) detection of microwave background anisotropies may contain a component due to gravitational waves generated by inflation. It is shown that the gravitational waves from inflation might be seen using…
Inflation leads us to expect a spectrum of gravitational waves (tensor perturbations) extending to wavelengths much bigger than the present observable horizon. Although these gravity waves are not directly observable, the energy density…
Primordial gravitational waves constitute a promising probe of the very early Universe and the laws of gravity. We study in this work changes to tensor-mode perturbations (TMPs) that can arise in various proposed modified gravity (MG)…
Inflationary models with power-law potentials are starting to be severely constrained by the recent measurements of Cosmic Microwave Background anisotropies provided by the Planck Satellite and by the BICEP2 telescope. In particular, models…
A detection of excess cosmic microwave background (CMB) B-mode polarization on large scales allows the possibility of measuring not only the amplitude of these fluctuations but also their scale dependence, which can be parametrized as the…
The BICEP2 collaboration has reported a strong B mode signal in the CMB polarization, which is well fit by a tensor-to-scalar ratio of r ~ 0.2. This is greater than the upper limit r < 0.11 obtained from the temperature anisotropies under…
Spectra of density perturbations produced during chaotic inflation are calculated, taking both adiabatic and isocurvature modes into account in a class of scalar-tensor theories of gravity in which the dilaton is metrically coupled.…
We compute energy density and strain induced by a primordial spectrum of gravitational waves on terrestrial- and space-based detectors (e.g., LIGO) as constrained by the COBE detection of microwave background anisotropy. For the case where…
We reconsider the problems of cosmological inflation in effective supergravity theories. A singlet field in a hidden sector is demonstrated to yield an acceptable inflationary potential, without fine tuning. In the simplest such model, the…
We present the constraints on inflationary parameters in a flat $\Lambda$CDM universe obtained by WMAP three year data release, plus smaller scale CMB and two LSS data sets, 2dF and SDSS (treated separately). We use a Markov Chain Monte…
Models in which a large fraction of the Galactic dark matter takes the form of cold gas clouds imply that there is thermal microwave emission from the Galactic dark halo. Such models can therefore be directly constrained by data on the…
We propose a new version of the hybrid inflation scenario that produces a significantly tilted n>1 spectrum of curvature perturbations. This may happen in supersymmetric models where the inflaton field acquires a mass proportional to the…
Cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropy may result from both scalar and tensor perturbations. For a sufficiently narrow range of angular scales, CMB perturbations can be characterized by four parameters. Results from the Cosmic…
We study cosmological tensor perturbations induced by second-order scalar perturbations in the presence of anisotropic non-Gaussianity. This class of induced tensor modes arises on superhorizon scales through the intrinsic quadrupole…
Inflation predicts a stochastic background of gravitational waves over a broad range of frequencies, from those accessible with cosmic microwave background (CMB) measurements, to those accessible directly with gravitational-wave detectors,…
We study a model of inflation where the scalar perturbations are almost gaussian while there is sizable (equilateral) nongaussianity in the tensor sector. In this model, a rolling pseudoscalar gravitationally coupled to the inflaton…
Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) anisotropies that result from quantum fluctuations during inflation are explored and the impact of their ``cosmic variance'' on the ability to use existing data to probe inflationary models is studied. We…