Related papers: Who is the Inflaton?
We consider cosmological perturbations caused by modulated inflaton velocity. During inflation, the inflaton motion is damped and the velocity is determined by the parameters such as couplings or masses that may depend on light…
In the framework of chaotic inflation we study the case of a massive scalar field using a semiclassical approach. We derive the energy density fluctuations in the infrared sector generated by matter field and gauge-invariant metric…
Inflation models are compared with observation on the assumption that the curvature perturbation is generated from the vacuum fluctuation of the inflaton field. The focus is on single-field models with canonical kinetic terms, classified as…
A new model of inflation is described. An unusual form for the inflationary potential is obtained because the inflaton corresponds to a non-trivial path in the configuration space of the two real scalar fields of the model. The model…
Dynamics of the inflaton is studied when it interacts with boson and fermion fields and in minimal supersymmetric models. This encompasses multifield inflation models, such as hybrid inflation, and typical reheating models. For much of the…
We propose a possibility that the inflaton potential is significantly modified after inflation due to heavy field dynamics. During inflation there may be a heavy scalar field stabilized at a value deviated from the low-energy minimum. As…
We examine the spectrum of inflaton fluctuations resulting from any given long period of exponential inflation. Infrared and ultraviolet divergences in the inflaton dispersion summed over all modes do not appear in our approach. We show how…
To confront the transplanckian problem encountered in the backward extrapolation of the cosmological expansion of the momenta of the modes of quantum field theory, it is proposed that there is a reservoir, depository of transplanckian…
We investigate the phenomenon of mass inflation in two-dimensional dilaton theories of gravity. We consider two distinct black hole spacetimes and construct the mass-inflation solution for each. Our analysis is extended to include…
The emergence of time in the matter-gravity system is addressed within the context of the inflationary paradigm. A quantum minisuperspace-homogeneous minimally coupled inflaton system is studied with suitable initial conditions leading to…
A new class of gravity-matter model defined with an independent non-Riemannian volume form is studied, in the second order formalism. The action has a global scale invariance symmetry, which can be broken by the equation of motion of the…
Antisymmetric tensor field (two-form field) is a ubiquitous component in string theory and generally couples to the scalar sector through its kinetic term. In this paper, we propose a cosmological scenario that the particle production of…
In the context of Brans--Dicke theories, eternal inflation is described in such a way that the evolution of the inflaton field is determined by the value of the Planck mass in different regions of the universe. The Planck mass is given by…
It is proposed that after the macroscopic fluctuation of energy density that is responsible for inflation dies away, a class of microscopic fluctuations, always present, survives to give the present day dark energy. This latter is simply a…
We introduce a new class of models of chaotic inflation inspired by the superconformal approach to supergravity. This class of models allows a functional freedom of choice of the inflaton potential V = |f(\phi)|^2. The simplest model of…
If cosmic inflation was driven by an electrically neutral scalar field stable on cosmological time scales, the field necessarily constitutes all or part of dark matter (DM). We study this possibility in a scenario where the inflaton field…
We review conceptual aspects of inflationary scenarios able to produce primordial black holes, by amplifying the size of curvature fluctuations to the level required for triggering black hole formation. We identify general mechanisms to do…
Whereas preheating after chaotic and hybrid inflation models has been abundantly studied in the literature, preheating in small field inflation models, where the curvature of the inflaton potential is negative during inflation, remains less…
Recently multi-field inflation models that can produce large scalar fluctuations on small scales have drawn a lot of attention, primarily because they could lead to primordial black hole production and generation of large second-order…
We discuss inflation in models with large extra dimensions, driven by a bulk scalar field. The brane inflaton is then a single effective field, obtained from the bulk scalar field by scaling. The self interaction terms of the effective…