Related papers: Can MAP and Planck map Planck physics?
Inflation generates gravitational waves, which may be observable in the low multipoles of the cosmic microwave background (cmb) anisotropy but only if the inflaton field variation is at least of order the Planck scale. Such a large…
General relativistic effects in the form of metric perturbations are usually neglected in the preheating era that follows inflation. We argue that in realistic multi-field models these effects are in fact crucial, and the fully coupled…
The observational constraints on the primordial power spectrum have tightened considerably with the release of the first year analysis of the WMAP observations, especially when combined with the results from other CMB experiments and galaxy…
The observation of primordial gravitational waves could provide a new and unique window on the earliest moments in the history of the universe, and on possible new physics at energies many orders of magnitude beyond those accessible at…
We compute the corrections to the primordial power spectrum that should arise in realistic inflationary scenarios if there exists a generic covariant ultraviolet (UV) cutoff, as commonly motivated by considerations of quantum gravity. The…
Two extensions of ideas lying in the basis of the inflationary scenario of the early Universe and their effect on the large scale structure of the present-day Universe are discussed. The first of them is the possibility of fast phase…
The observed power spectrum of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) is consistent with inflationary cosmology, which predicts a nearly scale-invariant power spectrum of quantum fluctuations of the inflaton field as they exit the Hubble…
We report on the implications for cosmic inflation of the 2018 Release of the Planck CMB anisotropy measurements. The results are fully consistent with the two previous Planck cosmological releases, but have smaller uncertainties thanks to…
In this note we investigate how a possible signal in the WMAP3 data of rapid oscillations in the primordial spectrum can be accommodated into an effective model of transplanckian physics including back reaction. The results, if due to a…
We study an inflationary scenario where thermal inflation is followed by fast-roll inflation. This is a rather generic possibility based on the effective potentials of spontaneous symmetry breaking in the context of particle physics models.…
We consider the spectrum of primordial fluctuations produced by inflationary models where the inflaton potential is the sum of two exponential terms. A wide range of spectra result, with the only constraint being that the scalar spectrum…
We survey recent calculations probing what constraints decoupling can put on the influence of very-high-energy physics on the predictions of inflation for the cosmic microwave background. Using garden-variety hybrid inflation models we…
Thermal fluctuations provide the main source of large scale density perturbations in warm inflationary models of the early universe. For the first time, general results are obtained for the power spectrum in the case when the friction…
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…
As a test of the standard inflationary cosmology, which generically predicts nearly scale-invariant spectrum of primordial curvature fluctuations, we perform Markov-Chain Monte-Carlo analysis to search for possible modulations in the power…
We compute the spectrum of cosmological perturbations in a scenario in which inflation is driven by radiation in a non-commutative space-time. In this scenario, the non-commutativity of space and time leads to a modified dispersion relation…
Temperature anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background offers a test of the fundamental symmetry of spacetime during cosmic inflation. Violation of rotational symmetry yields a distinct signature in the power spectrum of primordial…
Inflation universally produces classical almost scale free Gaussian inhomogeneities of any light scalars. Assuming the coupling constants at the time of inflation depend on some light moduli fields, we encounter the generation of modulated…
At the beginning of inflation there could be extra dynamical scalar fields that will soon disappear (become static) before the end of inflation. In the light of multi-field inflation, those extra degrees of freedom may alter the…
Is there new physics hidden in the four-point function of the cosmic microwave background (CMB)? We conduct a detailed analysis of the Planck PR4 temperature and polarization trispectrum for $\ell\in[2,2048]$. Using the theoretical and…