Related papers: Observational tests of inflation
In a variety of inflation models the motion of the inflaton may trigger the production of some non-inflaton particles during inflation, for example via parametric resonance or a phase transition. Particle production during inflation leads…
A scenario with two subsequent periods of inflationary expansion in the very early universe is examined. The model is based on a potential motivated by symmetries being found in field theory at high energy. For various parameter sets of the…
The simplicity of the CMB data, so well described by single-field inflation, raises the question whether there might be an equally simple multi-field realization consistent with the observations. We explore the idea that an approximate…
The previously proposed class of phenomenological inflationary models in which the assumption of inflaton slow-roll is replaced by the more general, constant-roll condition is compared with the most recent cosmological observational data,…
Inflation in the early Universe is one of the most promising probes of gravity in the high-energy regime. However, observable scales give access to a limited window in the inflationary dynamics. In this essay, we argue that quantum…
Eternal inflation arising from a potential landscape predicts that our universe is one realization of many possible cosmological histories. One way to access different cosmological histories is via the nucleation of bubble universes from a…
I discuss the current status of inflationary cosmology in light of the recent WMAP 3-year data release. The basic predictions of inflation are all supported by the data. Inflation also makes predictions which have not been well tested by…
In the picture of eternal inflation as driven by a scalar potential with multiple minima, our observable universe resides inside one of many bubbles formed from transitions out of a false vacuum. These bubbles necessarily collide, upsetting…
Cosmological inflation is studied in the case where the inflaton is the overall modulus $T$ for an orbifold. General forms of the (non-perturbative) superpotential are considered to ensure that $G=K+{\rm ln}|W|^2$ is modular invariant. We…
This is the third paper in a series establishing a quantitative relation between inflationary scalar field potential landscapes and the relic perturbations left by the collision between bubbles produced during eternal inflation. We…
We consider small-field models which invoke the usual framework for the effective field theory, and large-field models which go beyond that. Present and future possibilities for discriminating between the models are assessed, on the…
We study an inflationary scenario with a vector impurity. We show that the universe undergoes anisotropic inflationary expansion due to a preferred direction determined by the vector. Using the slow-roll approximation, we find a formula to…
Gauge-flation model at zeroth order in cosmological perturbation theory offers an interesting scenario for realizing inflation within a particle physics context, allowing us to investigate interesting possible connections between inflation…
The inflationary scenario is not the only paradigm of early universe cosmology which is consistent with current observations. General criteria will be presented which any successful early universe model must satisfy. Various ways, including…
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…
In this paper we study possible observational consequences of the bouncing cosmology. We consider a model where a phase of inflation is preceded by a cosmic bounce. While we consider in this paper only that the bounce is due to loop quantum…
We consider inflation in a universe with a positive cosmological constant and a nonminimally coupled scalar field, in which the field couples both quadratically and quartically to the Ricci scalar. When considered in the Einstein frame and…
A general overview of the history and present status of inflationary cosmology is given. Recent developments discussed in this paper include the hybrid inflation scenario, the theory of reheating, and the theory of inflating tolopogical…
The very basics of cosmological inflation are discussed. We derive the equations of motion for the inflaton field, introduce the slow-roll parameters, and present the computation of the inflationary perturbations and their connection to the…
We argue that in the context of eternal inflation in the landscape, making predictions for cosmological -- and possibly particle physics -- observables requires a measure on the possible cosmological histories as opposed to one on the vacua…