Related papers: Observational tests of inflation
In generic models of cosmological inflation, quantum fluctuations strongly influence the spacetime metric and produce infinitely many regions where the end of inflation (reheating) is delayed until arbitrarily late times. The geometry of…
Loop quantum cosmology provides an efficient framework to study the evolution of the Universe beyond the classical Big Bang paradigm. Because of holonomy corrections, the singularity is replaced by a "bounce". The dynamics of the background…
We investigate the quantum cosmological tunneling scenario for inflationary models. Within a path-integral approach, we derive the corresponding tunneling probability distribution. A sharp peak in this distribution can be interpreted as the…
Inflation is a highly favoured theory for the early Universe. It is compatible with current observations of the cosmic microwave background and large scale structure and is a driver in the quest to detect primordial gravitational waves. It…
Inflationary cosmology attempts to provide a natural explanation for the flatness and homogeneity of the observable universe. In the context of reversible (unitary) evolution, this goal is difficult to satisfy, as Liouville's theorem…
Inflation is considered as the best theory of the early universe by a very large fraction of cosmologists. However, the validity of a scientific model is not decided by counting the number of its supporters and, therefore, this dominance…
The current status of early universe cosmology can be summarized as precision, but inherently limited, data requiring explanation from precision and robust theory. Specifically inflation is presently the single concrete hope for solving the…
In this paper we will analyze generic predictions of an inflection-point model of inflation with Hubble-induced corrections and study them in light of the Planck data. Typically inflection-point models of inflation can be embedded within…
From the damping of the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation (CMB) anisotropy power spectrum at large scale and the recent accelerating expansion of the Universe, we find that, there may be a largest scale which we can detect in the…
We consider cosmological inflation generated by a scalar field slowly rolling off from a de Sitter maximum of its potential. The models belong to the class of hilltop models and represent the most general model of this kind in which the…
Inflationary cosmology successfully accounts for the observed properties of primordial fluctuations using quantum field theory in an expanding background. However, the quantum nature of these fluctuations has not been experimentally…
Making observable predictions for cosmic inflation requires determining when the wavenumbers of astrophysical interest today exited the Hubble radius during the inflationary epoch. These instants are commonly evaluated using the slow-roll…
If a coupling between the inflaton and the Gauss-Bonnet term is introduced, many models of inflation that were ruled out by the most recent Planck data can be made viable again. The predictions for the scalar spectral index and…
Inflation produces super-horizon sized perturbations that ultimately return within the horizon and are thought to form the seeds of all observed large scale structure in the Universe. But inflationary predictions can only be compared with…
Predictions of inflationary schemes can be influenced by the presence of extra dimensions. This could be of particular relevance for the spectrum of gravitational waves in models where the extra dimensions provide a brane-world solution to…
The inflationary and pre-inflationary evolution of scalar modes of cosmological perturbations in a closed universe is analyzed for a loop quantum cosmology model with an inflationary regime consistent with the constraints on inflation…
If a light axion is present during inflation and becomes part of dark matter afterwards, its quantum fluctuations contribute to dark matter isocurvature. In this article, we introduce a whole new suite of cosmological observables for axion…
Massive particles produced during inflation impact soft limits of primordial correlators. Searching for these signatures presents an exciting opportunity to uncover the particle spectrum in the inflationary epoch. We present…
We present the general discussion on the inflection point inflation with small or large inflaton fields and show the effects of reheating dynamics on the inflationary predictions. In order to compare the model predictions with precisely…
Slow-roll inflation is a successful paradigm. However we find that even a small coupling of the inflaton to other light fields can dramatically alter the dynamics and predictions of inflation. As an example, the inflaton can generically…