Related papers: Inflation Unloaded
We propose a scenario of the beginning of inflation in which the non-vacuum value of the scalar field that drives inflation develops dynamically due to the non-minimal coupling to gravity. In this scenario, inflation emerges as an…
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…
Inflation produces super-horizon sized perturbations that ultimately return within the horizon and are thought to form the seeds of all observed large scale structure in the Universe. But inflationary predictions can only be compared with…
The inflationary scenario, which states that the early universe underwent a brief but dramatic period of accelerated spatial expansion, has become the current paradigm of early universe cosmology. Although inflationary cosmology has its…
Higher-form flux that extends in all 3+1 dimensions of spacetime is a source of positive vacuum energy that can drive meta-stable eternal inflation. If the flux also threads compact extra dimensions, the spontaneous nucleation of a bubble…
We study the details of eternal inflation in the presence of a spectator Higgs field within the framework of the minimal Standard Model. We have recently shown that in the presence of scalar field(s) which allow inflation only within a…
We investigate the effects of non-zero spatial curvature on cosmic inflation in the light of cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropy measurements from the Planck 2018 legacy release and from the 2015 observing season of BICEP2 and the…
A generic prediction of inflation is that the thermalized region we inhabit is spatially infinite. Thus, it contains an infinite number of regions of the same size as our observable universe, which we shall denote as $\O$-regions. We argue…
In inflationary cosmology all particle states decay as a consequence of the lack of kinematic thresholds. The decay of an initial single particle state yields an \emph{entangled quantum state of the product particles}. We generalize and…
Inflation is considered as the best theory of the early universe by a very large fraction of cosmologists. However, the validity of a scientific model is not decided by counting the number of its supporters and, therefore, this dominance…
The basic workings of inflationary models are summarized, along with the arguments that strongly suggest that our universe is the product of inflation. The mechanisms that lead to eternal inflation in both new and chaotic models are…
We generalise Starobinsky's model of inflation to space-times with $D>4$ dimensions, where $D-4$ dimensions are compactified on a suitable manifold. The $D$-dimensional action features Einstein-Hilbert gravity, a higher-order curvature…
An approach to construct cosmological inflation models on the basis of a certain dependence of the scalar field evolution on the e-folds number is considered. The reconstruction of the model background parameters according to the kind of…
The inflationary scenario has become the paradigm of early universe cosmology, and - in conjuction with ideas from superstring theory - has led to speculations about an "inflationary multiverse". From a point of view of phenomenology, the…
We draw attention to the possibility that inflation (i.e. accelerated expansion) might continue after the end of slow roll, during a period of fast oscillations of the inflaton field \phi . This phenomenon takes place when a mild…
We review an inflationary scenario with the anisotropic expansion rate. An anisotropic inflationary universe can be realized by a vector field coupled with an inflaton, which can be regarded as a counter example to the cosmic no-hair…
Discovered almost forty years ago, inflation has become the leading paradigm for the early universe. Originally invented to avoid the fine-tuning puzzles of the standard model of cosmology, the so-called hot Big Bang phase, inflation has…
We investigate the evolution of black holes present during the inflationary epoch, assuming they are dynamically coupled to the cosmological background through a generalized McVittie geometry, such that their gravitational mass scales with…
We consider a model of inflation which has recently been proposed in the literature and where inflation is induced by corrections to the energy density coming from the non-commutativity of spacetime. We show that the very rapid inflationary…
We show that eternal inflation is compatible with holography. In particular, we emphasize that if a region is asymptotically de Sitter in the future, holographic arguments by themselves place no bound on the number of past e-foldings. We…