Related papers: Moduli Inflation with Large Scale Structure Produc…
In brane inflationary scenarios, the cosmological perturbations are supposed to originate from the vacuum fluctuations of the inflaton field corresponding to the position of the brane. We show that a significant, and possibly dominant,…
The most important criteria for a successful inflation are to explain the observed temperature anisotropy in the cosmic microwave background radiation, and exiting inflation in a vacuum where it can excite the Standard Model quarks and…
Production of gravitationally coupled light moduli fields must be suppressed in the early universe, so that its decay products do not alter Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN) predictions for light elements. On the other hand, the moduli quanta…
The "central" region of moduli space of M- and string theories is where the string coupling is about unity and the volume of compact dimensions is about the string volume. Here we argue that in this region the non-perturbative potential…
The pre-big-bang cosmology inspired by superstring theories has been suggested as an alternative to slow-roll inflation. We analyze, in both the Jordan and Einstein frames, the effect of spatial curvature on this scenario and show that too…
We show that multi-field inflationary models with negligible turning in field space during inflation can lead to an effective sourcing of adiabatic from entropic perturbations {\it after} the end of inflation. We illustrate this general…
We show that a short period of late D-term inflation can solve the cosmological moduli (radion) problem of (asymmetric) inflation at the TeV scale. Late inflation happens after the large compact dimensions are stabilized which is crucial…
In this paper, we demonstrate that a phenomenon described as "topological inflation" during which inflation occurs inside the core of topological defects, has a non-topological counterpart. This appears in a simple set-up containing…
We study the dynamics of axion-like fields in F-theory and suggest that they can serve as inflatons in models of natural inflation. The axions arise from harmonic three-forms on the F-theory compactification space and parameterize a complex…
We propose a new type of axion inflation with complex structure moduli in the framework of type IIB superstring theory compactified on Calabi-Yau manifold. The inflaton is identified as the axion for the complex structure moduli whose…
We propose an inflationary scenario, M-flation, in which inflation is driven by three $N\times N$ hermitian matrices $\Phi_i, i=1,2,3$. The inflation potential of our model, which is strongly motivated from string theory, is constructed…
A generic feature of the known string inflationary models is that the same physics that makes the inflaton lighter than the Hubble scale during inflation often also makes other scalars this light. These scalars can acquire isocurvature…
We study a particular supersymmetric realization of the Peccei-Quinn symmetry which provides a suitable candidate for the curvaton field. The class of models considered also solves the mu problem, while generating the Peccei-Quinn scale…
We consider a cosmological scenario within the KKLT framework for moduli stabilization in string theory. The universal open string tachyon of decaying non-BPS D-brane configurations is proposed to drive eternal topological inflation.…
In the framework of chaotic inflation we study the case of a massive scalar field using a semiclassical approach. We derive the energy density fluctuations in the infrared sector generated by matter field and gauge-invariant metric…
We consider the possibility that higher-curvature corrections could drive inflation after the compactification to four dimensions. Assuming that the low-energy limit of the fundamental theory is eleven-dimensional supergravity to the lowest…
Due to intra-field gravitational interactions, field configurations have a strong negative component to their energy density at the planckian and transplanckian scales, conceivably resulting in a sequestration of the transplanckian field…
A class of well-motivated models of inflation end by producing cosmic strings. The current status of efforts to calculate and observe the signals from such models are outlined, with a particular emphasis on cosmic strings, and on the Cosmic…
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…
We compute the power spectrum of super-horizon curvature perturbations generated during a late period of thermal inflation, taking into account fluctuation-dissipation effects resulting from the scalar flaton field's interactions with the…