Related papers: The Ubiquitous Inflaton in String-Inspired Models
A model of inflation is presented where the inflaton field is a complex scalar field coupled to a U(1) gauge field. Due to the axial symmetry of the potential, the inflation is driven by the radial direction while the angular field is…
Chain inflation takes place in the string theory landscape as the universe tunnels rapidly through a series of ever lower energy vacua such as may be characterized by quantized changes in four form fluxes. The string landscape may be well…
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…
In this talk, I review briefly a scenario for the evolution of a string-inspired cosmological model, in which condensates of primordial gravitational waves (GW), formed at the very early eras after the Big Bang, are considered responsible…
In construction of an inflationary model, one usually assumes that the matter sector of the gravitational action is minimally coupled to the background. It means that the matter (inflaton) part of the action is coupled with the same metric…
In order to solve the fine-tuning problem of the cosmological constant, we propose a simple model with the vacuum energy non-minimally coupled to the inflaton field. In this model, the vacuum energy decays to the inflaton during…
We propose a cosmological lingering phase for the initial state prior to inflation which would help address the singularity problem of inflation. The universe begins with a constant (Hagedorn) temperature and then transitions into an…
Fibre inflationary models are constructed in type-IIB string flux compactification. These models have been shown to be in agreement with the cosmological observations under appropriate choices of parameters, which originate from their…
We show that inflation can naturally occur at a finite temperature T>H that is sustained by dissipative effects, when the inflaton field corresponds to a pseudo Nambu-Goldstone boson of a broken gauge symmetry. Similarly to "Little Higgs"…
A dissipative mechanism is presented, which emerges in generic interacting quantum field systems and which leads to robust warm inflation. An explicit example is considered, where using typical parameter values, it is shown that…
The notion of inflation (past or present) in standard cosmological models is shown to be a consequence of a sufficiently high second law entropy production from the internal heating of the universal expansion. The longitudinal viscous…
The four-form field recently considered by Hawking and Turok couples naturally to a charged membrane, across which the effective cosmological constant has a discontinuity. We present instantons for the creation of an open inflationary…
We propose a new mechanism to generate density perturbations in inflationary models. Spatial fluctuations in the decay rate of the inflaton field to ordinary matter lead to fluctuations in the reheating temperature. We argue that in most…
We consider reheating in a class of asymptotically safe quantum field theories recently studied in \cite{Litim:2014uca, Litim:2015iea}. These theories allow for an inflationary phase in the very early universe. Inflation ends with a period…
We present a simple two-field model of inflation and show how to embed it in string theory as a straightforward generalization of axion monodromy models. Phenomenologically, the predictions are equivalent to those of chaotic inflation, and…
We consider the non-equilibrium evolution of the inflaton field coupled to both lighter scalars and fermions. The dissipational dynamics of this field is studied and found to be quite different than that believed in inflationary models. In…
A four-dimensional universe, arising from a flux compactification of Type IIB string theory, contains scalar fields with a potential determined by topological and geometric parameters of the internal -hidden- dimensions. We show that…
We show that it is possible to realize an inflationary scenario even without conversion of the false vacuum energy to radiation. Such cosmological models have a deflationary stage in which $Ha^2$ is decreasing and radiation produced by…
We analyze the dynamics of models of warm inflation with general dissipative effects. We consider phenomenological terms both for the inflaton decay rate and for viscous effects within matter. We provide a classification of the asymptotic…
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…