Related papers: Topological Defect Inflation
We propose that under certain conditions the universal open string tachyon can drive topological inflation in moduli stabilised frameworks. Namely, the presence of electric field in the world volume of the D-brane can slow down its decay…
We propose that the only possible realization of a magnetic pole is emergent, it being an artefact of a torsion defect in a curved spacetime. This special phase is characterized by a class of degenerate metric spacetime solutions of first…
I summarize the arguments that strongly suggest that our universe is the product of inflation. The mechanisms that lead to eternal inflation in both new and chaotic models are described. Although the infinity of pocket universes produced by…
Many models of supersymmetry breaking involve particles with weak scale mass and Planck mass suppressed couplings. Coherent production of such particles in the early universe destroys the successful predictions of nucleosynthesis. We show…
We consider an Einstein-Scalar-Gauss-Bonnet gravitational theory, and argue that at early times the Ricci scalar can be safely ignored. We then demonstrate that the pure scalar-Gauss-Bonnet theory, with a quadratic coupling function,…
We show the existence of a general mechanism by which heavy scalar fields can be destabilized during inflation, relying on the fact that the curvature of the field space manifold can dominate the stabilizing force from the potential and…
Natural (axionic) inflation can accommodate sizeable primordial tensor modes but suffers from the necessity of trans-Planckian variations of the inflaton field. This problem can be solved via the mechanism of aligned axions…
It has been proposed that, without invoking supersymmetry, it is possible to solve the hierarchy problem provided the fundamental scale in the higher dimensional theory is at a much lower scale than the Planck scale. In this paper we…
We study inflationary dynamics within the framework of fractal cosmology, where space is characterized by an effective non-integer dimension $D$. In our work, fractal effects are sourced through thermodynamic modifications at the…
We investigate the entanglement due to geometric corrections in particle creation during inflation. To do so, we propose a single-field inflationary scenario, nonminimally coupled to the scalar curvature of spacetime. We require particle…
We investigate the embedding of brane inflation into stable compactifications of string theory. At first sight a warped compactification geometry seems to produce a naturally flat inflaton potential, evading one well-known difficulty of…
Whichever could be the real theory of gravitation, the corresponding low-energy effective lagrangian will probably contain higher derivative terms. In this work we study the general conditions on those terms in order to produce enough…
General Relativity is recovered from Brans-Dicke gravity in the limit of large $\omega$. In this article we investigate theories of Brans-Dicke gravity with chaotic inflation, allowing for either a constant or variable value of $\omega$,…
We investigate which of the exotic Doppler peak features found for textures and cosmic strings are generic novelties pertaining to defects. We find that the ``out of phase'' texture signature is an accident. Generic defects, when they…
One of the greatest problems of standard cosmology is the Big Bang singularity. Previously it has been shown that non-local ghostfree higher-derivative modifications of Einstein gravity in the ultra-violet regime can admit non-singular…
By means of Bayesian techniques, we study how a premature ending of inflation, motivated by geometrical destabilization, affects the observational evidences of typical inflationary models. Large field models are worsened, and inflection…
Motivated by the lessons of black hole complementarity, we develop a causal patch description of eternal inflation. We argue that an observer cannot ascribe a semiclassical geometry to regions outside his horizon, because the large-scale…
We study an inflation mechanism based on attractor properties in cosmological evolutions of a spatially flat Friedmann-Robertson-Walker spacetime based on the Einstein-scalar field theory. We find a new way to get the Hamilton-Jacobi…
It is widely accepted that the primordial universe experienced a brief period of accelerated expansion called inflation. This scenario provides a plausible solution to the horizon and flatness problems. However, the particle physics…
The discovery of the string theory landscape has recently brought attention to the eternal nature of inflation. In contrast to the common belief that eternal inflation may be a generic feature of most inflationary models, in this note we…