Related papers: Scalar Speed Limits and Cosmology: Acceleration fr…
In this paper we analyze scalar gravitational perturbations on a Robertson-Walker background in the presence of multiple scalar fields that take values on a (geometrically non-trivial) field manifold during slow-roll inflation. For this…
In holographic inflation, the $4D$ cosmological dynamics is postulated to be dual to the renormalization group flow of a $3D$ Euclidean conformal field theory with marginally relevant operators. The scalar potential of the $4D$ theory ---in…
We compute boundary three-point functions involving two scalars and a gauge field of arbitrary spin in the AdS vacuum of Vasiliev's higher spin gravity, for any deformation parameter \lambda. In the process, we develop tools for extracting…
There are effective field theories that cannot be embedded in any UV complete theory. We consider scalar effective field theories, with and without dynamical gravity, in $D$-dimensional anti-de Sitter (AdS) spacetime with large radius and…
The equation of state associated with ${\cal N}=4$ supersymmetric Yang-Mills in 4 dimensions, for $SU(N)$ in the large $N$ limit, is investigated using the AdS/CFT correspondence. An asymptotically AdS black-hole on the gravity side…
The classical gravitational theory of a scalar field with a gradient coupling to the Ricci tensor is examined. This is a scalar-vector-tensor gravitational theory, but in the case that the coupling is weak and the scalar evolves like a…
We consider inflation with a constant rate of rolling in which a complex scalar field plays the role of inflaton during the inflationary epoch. We implement the inflationary analysis for an accredited angular speed $\dot{\theta}$ which…
A large class of $\Lambda < 0$ cosmologies have big-bang / big crunch spacetimes with time-symmetric backgrounds and asymptotically AdS Euclidean continuations suggesting a possible holographic realization. We argue that these models…
In the context of scalar-tensor theories, the inclusion of new degrees of freedom coupled non-minimally to the gravitational sector might produce some appealing effects on the cosmic expansion history. We investigate this premise by…
We consider a scalar field coupled to massless fermions through Yukawa couplings, such as the Higgs field, in a Robertson-Walker spacetime. We compute the nonlocal quantum effective action as a functional of the background scalar field and…
We find multi-scalar effective field theories (EFTs) that can achieve a slow inflationary roll despite having a scalar potential that does not satisfy the usual slow-roll condition (d V)^2 << V^2/Mp^2. They evade the usual slow-roll…
One of the fundamental objectives of contemporary cosmology is to understand the physics of the inflationary universe, owing to its observably verifiable predictions about the very early universe with an energy scale of $\sim 10^{16}$ GeV.…
Several extensions of General Relativity and high energy physics include scalar fields as extra degrees of freedom. In the search for predictions in the non-linear regime of cosmological evolution, the community makes use of numerical…
We investigate the scalar perturbations in a class of spatially covariant gravity theory with a dynamical lapse function. Generally, there are two scalar degrees of freedom due to the presence of the velocity of the lapse function. We treat…
Many candidate fundamental theories contain scalar fields that can acquire spacetime-varying expectation values in a cosmological context. Such scalars typically obey Lorentz-violating effective dispersion relations. We illustrate this fact…
We study the effect of rolling of N D3-branes in the vicinity of NS5-branes. We find out that this system coupled with the four dimensional gravity gives the slow roll assisted inflation of the scalar field theory. Once again this…
We construct smeared CFT operators which represent a scalar field in AdS interacting with gravity. The guiding principle is micro-causality: scalar fields should commute with themselves at spacelike separation. To O(1/N) we show that a…
We investigate aspects of quantum cosmology in relation to string cosmology systems that are described in terms of the Dirac-Born-Infeld action. Using the Silverstein-Tong model, we analyze the Wheeler-DeWitt equation for the rolling scalar…
One common approach for cosmic inflation consists in couple Einstein's gravity with a scalar field, often referred to inflaton field. In order to derive analytic simple scenarios, we usually work in the {\it slow-roll} regime. In such an…
A scalar field equivalent to a non-ideal "dark energy fluid" obeying a Shan-Chen-like equation of state is used as the background source of a flat Friedmann-Robertson-Walker cosmological spacetime to describe the inflationary epoch of our…