Related papers: Inflation on Moduli Space and Cosmic Perturbations
We study the back-reaction of moduli fields on the inflaton potential in generic models of F-term inflation. We derive the moduli corrections as a power series in the ratio of Hubble scale and modulus mass. The general result is illustrated…
Inflation, as currently understood, requires the presence of fields with very flat potentials. Supersymmetric models in which supersymmetry breaking is communicated by supergravity naturally yield such fields, but the scales are typically…
We investigate if the observed small and nearly scale-invariant primordial cosmic perturbation, i.e. the perturbation amplitude $P_\zeta\sim10^{-9}$ and the spectral index $n_s \simeq 0.965$, is typical in the landscape of vacua after…
Thermal inflation, a brief low energy inflation after the primordial inflation, resolves the moduli problem in the context of supersymmetric cosmology. In the thermal inflation scenario, the primordial power spectrum is modestly redshifted…
Flat directions in the Minimal Supersymmetric Standard Model (MSSM) can become unstable due to radiative corrections, and the global minimum of the (zero temperature) potential can lie at large values of the squark and/or slepton fields.…
In the framework of superstring compactifications with N=1 supersymmetry spontaneously broken, (by either geometrical fluxes, branes or else), we show the existence of new inflationary solutions. The time-trajectory of the scale factor of…
The theory of cosmological perturbations is the main tool which connects theories of the early universe (based on new fundamental physics such as string theory) with cosmological observations. In these lectures, I will provide an…
We discuss relationship between inflation and various models of production of density inhomogeneities due to strings, global monopoles, textures and other topological and non-topological defects. Neither of these models leads to a…
An alternative inflationary model is proposed predicated upon a consideration of the form of the uncertainty principle in a curved background spacetime. An argument is presented suggesting a possible curvature dependence in the correct…
We construct a model of inflation based on a low-energy effective theory of spontaneously broken global scale invariance. This provides a shift symmetry that protects the inflaton potential from quantum corrections. Since the underlying…
In spite of its great phenomenological success, current models of scalar field-driven inflation suffer from important unresolved conceptual issues. New fundamental physics will be required to address these questions. String theory is a…
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…
A scale-invariant universe can have a period of accelerated expansion at early times: inflation. We use a frame-invariant approach to calculate inflationary observables in a scale invariant theory of gravity involving two scalar fields -…
Forthcoming missions probing the absolute intensity of the CMB are expected to be able to measure spectral distortions, which are deviations from its blackbody distribution. As cosmic inflation can induce spectral distortions, these…
We extend the analysis of the recently obtained stringy cosmological solutions induced by thermal and quantum effects, once space-time supersymmetry is spontaneously broken by geometrical fluxes. Cases in which more than one modulus…
The space of inflationary models is vast, containing wide varieties of mechanisms, symmetries, and spectra of particles. Consequently, the space of observational signatures is similarly complex. Hence, it is natural to look for boundaries…
We study the pattern of oscillations in the primordial power spectrum in axion monodromy inflation, accounting for drifts in the oscillation period that can be important for comparing to cosmological data. In these models the potential…
It has recently been realized that many theories of physics beyond the Standard Model give rise to cosmological histories exhibiting extended epochs of cosmological stasis. During such epochs, the abundances of different energy components…
We investigate moduli field dynamics in supergravity/M-theory like set ups where we turn on fluxes along some or all of the extra dimensions. As has been argued in the context of string theory, we observe that the fluxes tend to stabilize…
We discuss some model-independent implications of embedding (aligned) axionic inflation in string theory. As a consequence of string theoretic duality symmetries the pure cosine potentials of natural inflation are replaced by modular…