Related papers: An effective theory of initial conditions in infla…
Understanding how a field theory propagates the information contained in a given initial state is essential for quantifying the sensitivity of the cosmic microwave background to physics above the Hubble scale during inflation. Here we…
An effective description of an initial state is a method for representing the signatures of new physics in the short-distance structure of a quantum state. The expectation value of the energy-momentum tensor for a field in such a state…
The intricate machinery of perturbative quantum field theory has largely been devoted to the 'dynamical' side of the theory: simple states are evolved in complicated ways. This article begins to address this lopsided treatment. Although it…
During inflation, there is a preferred reference frame in which the expansion of the background spacetime is spatially isotropic. In contrast to Minkowski spacetime, observables can depend on the velocity of the system with respect to this…
We renormalize the divergences in the energy-momentum tensor of a scalar field that begins its evolution in an effective initial state. The effective initial state is a formalism that encodes the signatures of new physics in the structure…
Recent observations about the cosmic microwave background evidence a clear discrepancy between the scale of inflation and the Planck scale expected in the conventional inflationary picture, based on simple chaotic inflationary models. This…
It has been suggested that the effects of renormalization significantly reduce the amplitude of the inflationary spectra at scales measurable in the cosmic microwave background. Via a gauge-invariant analysis, we compute the renormalized…
This review article aims at presenting the theory of inflation. We first describe the background spacetime behavior during the slow-roll phase and analyze how inflation ends and the Universe reheats. Then, we present the theory of…
A scenario with two subsequent periods of inflationary expansion in the very early universe is examined. The model is based on a potential motivated by symmetries being found in field theory at high energy. For various parameter sets of the…
We study the effects of non-trivial initial quantum states for inflationary fluctuations within the context of the effective field theory for inflation constructed by Cheung et al. which allows us to discriminate between different initial…
There is an apparent power deficit relative to the Lambda-CDM prediction of the CMB spectrum at large scales, which, though not yet statistically significant, persists from WMAP to Planck data. We first present a simple toy model…
We consider a more general initial condition satisfying the minimal uncertainty relationship. We calculate the power spectrum of a simple model in inflationary cosmology. The results depend on perturbations generated below a fundamental…
We clarify the status of transplanckian effects on the cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropy. We do so using the boundary effective action formalism of hep-th/0401164 which accounts quantitatively for the cosmological vacuum…
Cosmological inflation remains to be a unique mechanism of generation of plausible initial conditions in the early universe. In particular, it generates the primordial quasiclassical perturbations with power spectrum determined by the…
A perturbative description of Large Scale Structure is a cornerstone of our understanding of the observed distribution of matter in the universe. Renormalization is an essential and defining step to make this description physical and…
The solution to large-scale power deficit in the cosmic microwave background fluctuations may be relevant with the physics in the preinflationry period, and significantly depends on whether the initial conditions are set as Bunch-Davies…
The standard, scale-invariant, inflationary perturbation spectrum will be modified if the effects of trans-Planckian physics are incorporated into the dynamics of the matter field in a phenomenological manner, say, by the modification of…
If the large scale anomalies in the temperature power spectrum of the cosmic microwave background are of primordial origin, they may herald modifications to the slow roll inflationary paradigm on the largest scales. We study the possibility…
Space-based missions studying the cosmic microwave background (CMB) have progressively refined the parameter space in conventional models of inflation shortly ($\sim 10^{-37}$ seconds) after the big bang. While most inflationary scenarios…
We present a consistent low energy effective field theory framework for parameterizing the effects of novel short distance physics in inflation, and their possible observational signatures in the Cosmic Microwave Background. We consider the…