Related papers: Inflationary Solution to the Strong CP and $\mu$ P…
Axions in the Peccei-Quinn (PQ) mechanism provide a promising solution to the strong CP problem in the standard model of particle physics. Coherently generated PQ scalar fields could dominate the energy density in the early Universe and…
In $\mu$-hybrid inflation a nonzero inflaton vacuum expectation value induced by supersymmetry breaking is proportional to the gravitino mass $m_{3/2}$, which can be exploited to resolve the minimal supersymmetric standard model $\mu$…
We propose the first model of warm inflation in which the particle production emerges directly from coupling the inflaton to Standard Model particles. Warm inflation, an early epoch of sustained accelerated expansion at finite temperature,…
We explore a model of inflation where the inflaton mass-squared is generated at a high scale by gravity-mediated soft supersymmetry breaking, and runs at lower scales to the small value required for slow-roll inflation. The running is…
The Higgs field is an attractive candidate for the inflaton because it is an observationally confirmed fundamental scalar field. Importantly, it can be modeled by the most general renormalizable scalar potential. However, if the classical…
We study minimal versions of Higgs inflation in the presence of a massless QCD axion. While the inflationary energy scale of the metric variant is too high to accommodate isocurvature bounds, it was argued that Palatini Higgs inflation…
The Standard Model (SM) of particle physics is a big success. However, it lacks explanations for cosmic inflation, the matter-anti-matter asymmetry of the Universe, dark matter, neutrino oscillations, and the feebleness of CP violation in…
Supersymmetric Peccei-Quinn models which provide a suitable candidate for the curvaton field are studied. These models also solve the mu problem, while generating the Peccei-Quinn scale dynamically. The curvaton is a pseudo Nambu-Goldstone…
The QCD axion solving the strong CP problem may originate from antisymmetric tensor gauge fields in compactified string theory, with a decay constant around the GUT scale. Such possibility appears to be ruled out now by the detection of…
We propose to address the fine tuning problem of inflection point inflation by the addition of extra vacuum energy that is present during inflation but disappears afterwards. We show that in such a case, the required amount of fine tuning…
It is known that the Higgs potential becomes flat around the Planck scale under the assumption that the Standard Model is valid up to very high scale. Taking this into account, we revisit the Higgs inflation scenario and find that the…
We focus on a simple, natural and predictive T model of inflation in Supergravity employing as inflaton the Higgs field which leads to the spontaneous breaking of a U(1)_(B-L) symmetry at the SUSY GUT scale. We use a renormalizable…
We show how in a class of models Peccei--Quinn symmetry can be realized as an automatic consequence of a gauged $U(1)$ family symmetry. These models provide a solution to the strong CP problem either via a massless $u$--quark or via the…
For a robust interpretation of upcoming observations from PLANCK and LHC experiments it is imperative to understand how the inflationary dynamics of a non-minimally coupled Higgs scalar field with gravity may affect the determination of the…
We study reheating after the end of inflation in models where the inflaton is the superpartner of goldstino and is charged under a gauged $U(1)$ R-symmetry. We consider two classes of models -- one is small field characterized by an almost…
This article presents a possible inflation scenario as a consequence of non-minimal gravitational couplings in the Conformal Standard Model. The model consists, in comparison to the SM, of additional right-chiral neutrinos and complex…
In this PhD thesis we take smalls steps towards linking our knowledge of the Early Universe with our knowledge of particle physics. Chapters 3, 4 and 5 deal with Higgs inflation UV completions and their phenomenology. In Chapter 6 we…
We critically examine the recent claim that the Standard Model Higgs boson ${\cal H}$ could drive inflation in agreement with observations if $|{\cal H}|^2$ has a strong coupling $\xi\sim 10^4$ to the Ricci curvature scalar. We first show…
The generic embedding of the $R+R^2$ higher curvature theory into old-minimal supergravity leads to models with rich vacuum structure in addition to its well-known inflationary properties. When the model enjoys an exact R-symmetry, there is…
Most models of inflation have small parameters, either to guarantee sufficient inflation or the correct magnitude of the density perturbations. In this paper we show that, in supersymmetric theories with weak scale supersymmetry breaking,…