Related papers: Inflationary String Theory?
Inflation as the leading paradigm depicting the very early universe physics could leave imprints on the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation. Using currently available CMB observations, we give the tightest constraints on inflation…
In a previous paper we proposed a new approach to the beginning of inflation -- a lingering universe. The universe begins in a lingering state with a nearly vanishing Hubble parameter. This calls into question the absolute age of the…
An important unsolved problem that affects practically all attempts to connect string theory to cosmology and phenomenology is how to distinguish effective field theories belonging to the string landscape from those that are not consistent…
Observations of the cosmic microwave sky are revealing the primordial non-uniformities from which all structure in the Universe grew. The only known physical mechanism for generating the inhomogeneities we see involves the amplification of…
Inflation may provide unique insight into the physics at the highest available energy scales that cannot be replicated in any realistic terrestrial experiment. Features in the primordial power spectrum are generically predicted in a wide…
In cosmological models where local cosmic strings are formed at the end of a period of inflation, the perturbations are seeded both by the defects and by the quantum fluctuations. In a subset of these models, for example those based on…
Quantum fluctuations created during inflation can account for the observed matter distribution in the linear regime if the universe has two components of dark matter, one which is cold and collisionless, and the other which is hot and free…
With the recent measurements of temperature and polarization anisotropies in the microwave background by WMAP, we have entered a new era of precision cosmology, with the cosmological parameters of a Standard Cosmological Model determined to…
I discuss the current status of inflationary cosmology in light of the recent WMAP 3-year data release. The basic predictions of inflation are all supported by the data. Inflation also makes predictions which have not been well tested by…
I review some aspects of obtaining inflation from string theory, in particular brane-antibrane inflation within the framework of KKLMMT, and racetrack inflation. Further, I discuss recent work on the problem of reheating after…
Supersymmetry is the most natural framework for physics above the TeV scale, and the corresponding framework for early-Universe cosmology, including inflation, is supergravity. No-scale supergravity emerges from generic string…
I elaborate on a link between the string--scale breaking of supersymmetry that occurs in a class of superstring models and the onset of inflation. The link rests on spatially flat cosmologies supported by a scalar field driven by an…
Several pulsar timing array (PTA) missions have reported convincing evidence of a stochastic gravitational wave background within their latest datasets. This background could originate from an astrophysical source, though there are multiple…
We present an overview of inflationary models derived from string theory focusing mostly on closed string moduli as inflatons. After a detailed discussion of the eta-problem and different approaches to address it, we describe possible ways…
This thesis is dedicated to studying cosmological inflation, which is a period of accelerated expansion in the very early Universe that is required to explain the observed anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background. Inflation, when…
From a model-building perspective, the inflationary sector might very well have no direct couplings to other species, apart from inevitable gravitational interactions. Within the context of General Relativity, a thermal universe can still…
It has been proposed that the successful inflationary description of density perturbations on cosmological scales is sensitive to the details of physics at extremely high (trans-Planckian) energies. We test this proposal by examining how…
In this brief review we will discuss how a well motivated particle theory beyond the eletroweak Standard Model provides ingredients and conditions for a successful inflation. We will mainly focus on a low energy supersymmetric Standard…
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…
This paper is intended to offer a pedagogical treatment of cosmological modeling and inflationary cosmology. In recent years, inflation has become accepted as a standard scenario making predictions that are testable by observations of the…