Related papers: No cosmological domain wall problem for weakly cou…
We investigate the validity of effective field theory methods and the decoupling of heavy fields during inflation. Considering models of inflation in which the inflaton is coupled to a heavy (super-Hubble) degree of freedom initially in its…
It is shown that the coherent field oscillation of moduli fields with weak or TeV scale masses can dissipate its energy efficiently if they have a derivative coupling to standard bosonic fields in a thermal state. This mechanism may provide…
I show that the problem of realizing inflation in theories with random potentials of a limited number of fields can be solved, and agreement with the observational data can be naturally achieved if at least one of these fields has a…
It has recently been shown [1] that light vector particles produced from inflationary fluctuations can give rise to the dark matter in the Universe. A similar mechanism has been discussed in [2] for a non-minimally coupled scalar enjoying a…
If the Standard Model (SM) of elementary particle physics is assumed to hold good to arbitrarily high energies, then, for the best fit values of the parameters, the scalar potential of the Standard Model Higgs field turns negative at a high…
Scalar weak gravity conjectures (SWGCs) attempt to pinpoint the ranges of couplings consistent with a fundamental theory of all interactions. We identify a generic dynamical consequence of these conjectures for cosmology and show that SWGCs…
We study the stability of the electroweak vacuum in low-scale inflation models whose Hubble parameter is much smaller than the instability scale of the Higgs potential. In general, couplings between the inflaton and Higgs are present, and…
We explore inflationary cosmology in a theory where there are two scalar fields which non-minimally couple to the Ricci scalar and an additional $R^2$ term, which breaks the conformal invariance. Particularly, we investigate the slow-roll…
The dynamics of hybrid models is usually approximated by the evolution of a scalar field slowly rolling along a nearly flat valley. Inflation ends with a waterfall phase, due to a tachyonic instability. This final phase is usually assumed…
We investigate the inflationary universe in a theory where two scalar fields non-minimally coupling to the scalar curvature and an extra $R^2$ term exist and the conformal invariance is broken. In particular, the slow-roll inflation is…
Despite the success of Maxwell's electromagnetism in the description of the electromagnetic interactions on small scales, we know very little about the behaviour of electromagnetic fields on cosmological distances. Thus, it has been…
Based on random matrix theory, we compute the likelihood of saddles and minima in a class of random potentials that are softly bounded from above and below, as required for the validity of low energy effective theories. Imposing this bound…
Holographic considerations may provide a glimpse of quantum gravity beyond what is currently accessible by other means. Here we apply holography to inflationary cosmology. We argue that the appropriate holographic bound on the total entropy…
We show how successful supersymmetric hybrid inflation is realized in realistic models where the resolution of the minimal supersymmetric standard model mu problem is intimately linked with axion physics. The scalar fields that accompany…
Discrete R symmetries are interesting from a variety of points of view. They raise the specter, however, of domain walls, which may be cosmologically problematic. In this note, we describe some of the issues. In many schemes for…
If cosmological perturbations in our Hubble sized volume are nongaussian, then they will be coupled to any larger perturbation modes outside our Hubble volume. This has important consequences for modeling inflation: the scalar power…
A Friedman cosmology is investigated based on scalar-tensor gravitation with general metric coupling and scalar potential functions. We show that for a broad class of such functions, the scalar field can be dynamically trapped using a…
The abundance of the QCD axion is known to be suppressed if the Hubble parameter during inflation, $H_{\rm inf}$, is lower than the QCD scale, and if the inflation lasts sufficiently long. We show that the tight upper bound on the inflation…
We review the dynamics of spectator scalar fields non-minimally coupled to gravity in the post-inflationary Universe, with particular emphasis on scenarios where the end of inflation is followed by a period of kination. In this context, the…
We consider the no-boundary proposal for homogeneous isotropic closed universes with a cosmological constant and a scalar field with a quadratic potential. In the semi-classical limit, it predicts classical behavior at late times if the…