Related papers: Open inflation and the singular boundary
Usual inflation is realized with a slow rolling scalar field minimally coupled to gravity. In contrast, we consider dynamics of a scalar with a flat effective potential, conformally coupled to gravity. Surprisingly, it contains an attractor…
We critically examine the recent claim that the Standard Model Higgs boson ${\cal H}$ could drive inflation in agreement with observations if $|{\cal H}|^2$ has a strong coupling $\xi\sim 10^4$ to the Ricci curvature scalar. We first show…
A first order inflation model where a gauge coupling constant runs as the universe inflates is investigated. This model can solve the graceful-exit problem within Einstein gravity by varying the bubble formation rate. The sufficient…
A spontaneously broken global discrete symmetry may have pseudo Goldstone modes associated with the spontaneous breaking of the approximate continuous symmetry of the low dimension terms in the Lagrangian. These provide natural candidates…
We study inflation for a quantum scalar electrodynamics model in curved space-time and for higher-derivative quantum gravity (QG) coupled with scalar electrodynamics. The corresponding renormalization-group (RG) improved potential is…
The idea that the universe might be open is an old one, and the possibility of having an open universe arise form inflation is not new either. However, a concrete realization of a consistent single-bubble open inflation model is known only…
We show that a large class of two-field models of single-bubble open inflation do not lead to infinite open universes, as it was previously thought, but to an ensemble of very large but finite inflating `islands'. The reason is that the…
Non-abelian discrete gauge symmetries can provide the inflaton with a flat potential even when one takes into account gravitational strength effects. The discreteness of the symmetries also provide special field values where inflation can…
The holographic entropy bound is used to estimate the quantum-gravitational discreteness of inflationary perturbations. In the context of scalar inflaton perturbations produced during standard slow-roll inflation, but assuming that…
We consider a simple extension of the Standard Model Higgs inflation with one new real scalar field which preserves unitarity up to the Planck scale. The new scalar field (called sigma) completes in the ultraviolet the theory of Higgs…
The end of inflation is connected to the standard cosmological scenario through reheating. During reheating, the inflaton oscillates around the minimum of the potential and thus decays into the daughter particles that populate the Universe…
Toy models for the Hubble rate or the scalar field potential have been used to analyze the amplification of scalar perturbations through a smooth transition from inflation to the radiation era. We use a Hubble rate that arises consistently…
We consider the Higgs inflation in the extension of the Standard Model with two Higgs doublets coupled to gravity non-minimally. In the presence of an approximate global U(1) symmetry in the Higgs sector, both radial and angular modes of…
We consider slow-roll inflation in the context of recently proposed four-dimensional effective gravity induced on the world-volume of a three-brane in five-dimensional Einstein gravity. We find significant modifications of the simplest…
We consider a single scalar field inflation model with Higgs potential and curvature corrections given by non-minimal derivative coupling to gravity and coupling to the Gauss-Bonnet invariant. Exact analytical expressions, within the…
Proposing smooth initial conditions is one of the most important tasks in quantum cosmology. On the other hand, the low-energy effective action, appearing in the semiclassical path integral, can get nontrivial quantum corrections near…
The singularity present in cosmological instantons of the Hawking-Turok type is resolved by a conformal transformation, where the conformal factor has a linear zero of codimension one. We show that if the underlying regular manifold is…
We investigate the entanglement due to geometric corrections in particle creation during inflation. To do so, we propose a single-field inflationary scenario, nonminimally coupled to the scalar curvature of spacetime. We require particle…
A model of inflation is proposed in which compact extra dimensions allow a graceful exit without recourse to flat potentials or super-Planckian field values. Though bubbles of true vacuum are too sparse to uniformly reheat the Universe by…
The no-boundary wavefunction for slow-roll inflation on the 3-sphere exponentially favors a small universe, in sharp disagreement with observations. We show that this problem is resolved by changing the spatial topology to the 3-torus. The…