Related papers: Cosmological Perturbations from a New-Physics Hype…
The recent measurement of a cutoff k_min in the fluctuation power spectrum P(k) of the cosmic microwave background may vitiate the possibility that slow-roll inflation can simultaneously solve the horizon problem and account for the…
In this paper we investigate how the energy density due to a non-standard choice of initial vacuum affects the expansion of the universe during inflation. To do this we introduce source terms in the Friedmann equations making sure that we…
Starting from an initial state of thermal equilibrium, we derive an expression for the quantum fluctuation in the energy density during the inflationary epoch in terms of the mode functions for the inflaton field. The effect of this…
Although the paradigm of inflation has been extensively studied to demonstrate how macroscopic inhomogeneities in our universe originate from quantum fluctuations, most of the established literature ignores the crucial role that…
We show that dissipative effects have a significant impact on the evolution of cosmological scalar fields, leading to friction, entropy production and field fluctuations. We explicitly compute the dissipation coefficient for different…
We consider the amplification of electromagnetic quantum vacuum fluctuations induced by the presence of metric perturbations at the end of inflation. We obtain the amplitude of the corresponding magnetic fields on super-Hubble scales and…
Scalar fields in the minimal supersymmetric standard model may have large field values during inflation. Because of approximate global symmetry, it is plausible that the phase directions of them are nearly massless during inflation and…
Cosmic inflation provides a compelling framework for explaining several observed features of our Universe, but its viability depends on an efficient reheating phase that converts the inflaton's energy into Standard Model particles. This…
We compute, from first principles, the quantum fluctuations about instanton saddle points of the Euclidean path integral for Einstein gravity coupled to a scalar field. The Euclidean two-point correlator is analytically continued into the…
We discuss the possible role of quantum horizon fluctuations on black hole radiance, especially whether they can invalidate Hawking's analysis based upon transplanckian modes. We are particularly concerned with ``enhanced'' fluctuations…
Cosmological $\alpha$-attractors stand out as particularly compelling models to describe inflation in the very early universe, naturally meeting tight observational bounds from cosmic microwave background (CMB) experiments. We investigate…
Inflation models are compared with observation on the assumption that the curvature perturbation is generated from the vacuum fluctuation of the inflaton field. The focus is on single-field models with canonical kinetic terms, classified as…
Environment interaction may induce stochastic semiclassical dynamics in open quantum systems. In the gravitational context, stress-energy fluctuations of quantum matter fields give rise to a stochastic behaviour in the spacetime geometry.…
We investigate tensor modes in inflationary scenarios from the point of view of Ashtekar variables and their generalizations labelled by Immirzi parameter \gamma, which we'll assume imaginary. By defining the classical perturbed…
We provide a class of QFTs which exhibit dissipation above a threshold energy, thereby breaking Lorentz invariance. Unitarity is preserved by coupling the fields to additional degrees of freedom (heavy fields) which introduce the rest…
This article examines how breaking a Lorentz-invariant description of nature at tiny space-time intervals would affect the non-Gaussian character of the pattern of primordial perturbations left by inflation. We specifically study a set of…
The usual description of inflationary fluctuations uses the framework of quantum field theory (QFT) in curved spacetime, in which quantum fluctuations are superimposed on a classical background spacetime. Even for large fluctuations, such…
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…
The linear cosmological perturbation theory of an almost homogeneous and isotropic perfect fluid universe is reconsidered and formally simplified by introducing new covariant and gauge-invariant variables with physical interpretations on…
Recent calculations in loop quantum cosmology suggest that a transition from a Lorentzian to an Euclidean space-time might take place in the very early Universe. The transition point leads to a state of silence, characterized by a vanishing…