Related papers: Chain Inflation via Rapid Tunneling in the Landsca…
In Chain Inflation the universe tunnels along a series of false vacua of ever-decreasing energy. The main goal of this paper is to embed Chain Inflation in high energy fundamental physics. We begin by illustrating a simple effective…
We consider the model of ``Chain Inflation,'' in which the period of inflation in our universe took the form of a long sequence of quantum tunneling events. We find that in the simplest such scenario, in which the tunneling processes are…
In the model of Chain Inflation, a sequential chain of coupled scalar fields drives inflation. We consider a multidimensional potential with a large number of bowls, or local minima, separated by energy barriers: inflation takes place as…
Chain Inflation is an alternative to slow roll inflation in which the universe undergoes a series of transitions between different vacua. The density perturbations (studied in this paper) are seeded by the probabilistic nature of tunneling…
Open inflation scenario is attracting a renewed interest in the context of string landscape. Since there are a large number of metastable de Sitter vacua in string landscape, tunneling transitions to lower metastable vacua through the…
We investigate density perturbations in the chain inflation scenario, where the inflaton undergoes successive tunneling transitions along one field direction. First we show that when the bubble walls associated with such a phase transition…
Motivated by the string landscape we examine scenarios for which inflation is a two-step process, with a comparatively short inflationary epoch near the string scale and a longer period at a much lower energy (like the TeV scale). We…
The previous proposal (by two of us) of chain inflation with the QCD axion is shown to fail. The proposal involved a series of fast tunneling events, yet here it is shown that tunneling is too slow. We calculate the bubble nucleation rates…
Chain inflation is an alternative to slow-roll inflation in which the inflaton tunnels along a large number of consecutive minima in its potential. In this work we perform the first comprehensive calculation of the gravitational wave…
We investigate inflation in a multi-dimensional landscape with a hierarchy of energy scales, motivated by the string theory, where the energy scale of Kahler moduli is usually assumed to be much lower than that of complex structure moduli…
When electric-type flux threads compact extra dimensions, a quantum nucleation event can break a flux line and initiate a cascade that unwinds many units of flux. Here, we present a novel mechanism for inflation based on this phenomenon.…
We study some aspects of fine tuning in inflationary scenarios within string theory flux compactifications and, in particular, in models of accidental inflation. We investigate the possibility that the apparent fine-tuning of the low energy…
This paper represents an in-depth treatment of the chain inflation scenario. We fully determine the evolution of the universe in the model, the necessary conditions in order to have a successful inflationary period, and the matching with…
At its very beginning, the universe is believed to have grown exponentially in size via the mechanism of inflation. The almost scale-invariant density perturbation spectrum predicted by inflation is strongly supported by cosmological…
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…
Brane inflation is a specific realization of the inflationary universe scenario in the early universe within the brane world framework in string theory. The naturalness and robustness of this realistic scenario is explained. Its predictions…
Recently we introduced an inflationary setup in which the inflaton fields are matrix valued scalar fields with a generic quartic potential, M-flation. In this work we study the landscape of various inflationary models arising from…
We investigate slow-roll inflation in a multi-field random Gaussian landscape. The landscape is assumed to be small-field, with a correlation length much smaller than the Planck scale. Inflation then typically occurs in small patches of the…
In string theory, the traditional picture of a Universe that emerges from the inflation of a very small and highly curved space-time patch is a possibility, not a necessity: quite different initial conditions are possible, and not…
A four-dimensional universe, arising from a flux compactification of Type IIB string theory, contains scalar fields with a potential determined by topological and geometric parameters of the internal -hidden- dimensions. We show that…