Related papers: Null Energy Condition Violations in Eternal Inflat…
Since the advent of inflation, several theorems have been proven suggesting that although inflation can (and generically does) continue eternally into the future, it cannot be extended eternally into the past to create a ``steady-state''…
Inflation creates large-scale cosmological density perturbations that are characterized by an isotropic, homogeneous, and Gaussian random distribution about a locally flat background. Even in a flat universe, the spatial curvature measured…
We consider eternal inflation in hilltop-type inflation models, favored by current data, in which the scalar field in inflation rolls off of a local maximum of the potential. Unlike chaotic or plateau-type inflation models, in hilltop…
We study the renormalized energy-momentum tensor of cosmological scalar fluctuations during the slow-rollover regime for power-law inflation and find that it is characterized by a negative energy density at the leading order, with the same…
We argue that many future-eternal inflating spacetimes are likely to violate the weak energy condition. It is possible that such spacetimes may not enforce any of the known averaged conditions either. If this is indeed the case, it may open…
In this paper we study a massless, minimally coupled scalar field in a FLRW spacetime with periods of different constant deceleration parameter. We assume the Bunch-Davies vacuum during inflation and then use a sudden matching approximation…
We present a consistent effective theory that violates the null energy condition (NEC) without developing any instabilities or other pathological features. The model is the ghost condensate with the global shift symmetry softly broken by a…
When the slow-roll parameter $\epsilon_H$ is smaller than $H^2/M_{\rm Pl}^2$, the quantum fluctuations of the inflaton after the horizon crossing are large enough to realize eternal inflation. Whereas they do not generate a sufficient…
We report on a new class of fast-roll inflationary models. In a huge part of its parameter space, inflationary perturbations exhibit quite unusual phenomena such as scalar and tensor modes freezing out at widely different times, as well as…
In general relativity, the energy conditions are invoked to restrict general energy-momentum tensors $T_{\mu\nu}$ in different frameworks, and to derive general results that hold in a variety of general contexts on physical grounds. We show…
We propose a novel branch of the Galilean Genesis scenario as an alternative to inflation, in which the universe starts expanding from Minkowski in the asymptotic past with a gross violation of the null energy condition (NEC). This variant,…
In a recent paper [17], we studied the evolution of the background geometry and scalar perturbations in an inflationary, spatially closed Friedmann-Lema\^itre-Robertson-Walker (FLRW) model having constant positive spatial curvature and…
Constant-rate inflation, including ultra-slow-roll as a special case, has been widely applied to the formation of primordial black holes with significant deviation from the standard slow-roll conditions at both the growing and decaying…
We derive a general expression for the power spectra of scalar and tensor fluctuations generated during inflation given an arbitrary choice of boundary condition for the mode function at a short distance. We assume that the boundary…
The braneworld cosmology, in which our universe is imbedded as a hypersurface in a higher dimensional bulk, has the peculiar property that the inflationary consistency relation derived in a four-dimensional cosmology persists. This…
We use the excited coherent states built over the initial non-de Sitter modes, to study the modification of spectra of primordial scalar fluctuation. Non-de Sitter modes are actually the asymptotic solution of the inflaton field…
It was pointed out previously~\cite{Kinney:2014jya} that a sufficiently negative running of the spectral index of curvature perturbations from (ordinary i.e. cold) inflation is able to prevent eternal inflation from ever occurring. Here, we…
We argue that, under certain plausible assumptions, de Sitter space settles into a quiescent vacuum in which there are no dynamical quantum fluctuations. Such fluctuations require either an evolving microstate, or time-dependent histories…
We study the realization of cosmic inflation in bigravity theories. By analyzing the evolution of scalar, vector, and tensor perturbations in de Sitter-like spacetimes, we find strong stability constraints on the class of viable vacua…
We propose a cosmological lingering phase for the initial state prior to inflation which would help address the singularity problem of inflation. The universe begins with a constant (Hagedorn) temperature and then transitions into an…