相关论文: Axion Cosmology and the Energy Scale of Inflation
The companion-axion model introduces a second QCD axion to rescue the Peccei-Quinn solution to the strong-CP problem from the effects of colored gravitational instantons. As in single-axion models, the two axions predicted by the…
We consider a novel model of cosmic inflation. In our model one does not need any specific matter field to drive inflation, but inflation stems from the microscopic, Planck scale structure of spacetime, thus being of quantum gravitational…
Axions are among the best motivated dark matter candidates. Their production in the early Universe by the vacuum misalignment mechanism gives rise to isocurvature perturbations, which are constrained by cosmic microwave background…
It is known that if the Peccei-Quinn symmetry breaking field is displaced from its minimum during inflation, the axion isocurvature spectrum is generically strongly blue tilted with a break transition to a flat spectrum. We fit this…
A direct coupling between the inflaton and Standard Model gluons can dynamically raise the QCD confinement scale during inflation, making the axion temporarily heavy and suppressing axion isocurvature perturbations. As inflation proceeds,…
We show that the upper bound of the classical QCD axion window can be significantly relaxed for low-scale inflation. If the Gibbons-Hawking temperature during inflation is lower than the QCD scale, the initial QCD axion misalignment angle…
In this article we review the theory of cosmological inflation with a particular focus on the beautiful connection it provides between the physics of the very small and observations of the very large. We explain how quantum mechanical…
This thesis is centered on three main subjects within the theory of inflation and cosmological perturbations: loop corrections to the power spectrum of curvature fluctuations generated during inflation; evolution of cosmological…
If the inflaton is a pseudo-scalar axion, the axion shift symmetry can protect the flatness of its potential from too large radiative corrections. This possibility, known as natural inflation, requires an axion scale which is greater than…
The inflationary paradigm has enjoyed phenomenological success, however, a compelling particle physics realization is still lacking. The key obstruction is that the requirement of a suitably flat scalar potential is sensitive to…
In most current models of inflation based on a weakly self-coupled scalar matter field minimally coupled to gravity, the period of inflation lasts so long that, at the beginning of the inflationary period, the physical wavelengths of…
We study minimal versions of Higgs inflation in the presence of a massless QCD axion. While the inflationary energy scale of the metric variant is too high to accommodate isocurvature bounds, it was argued that Palatini Higgs inflation…
An epoch of accelerated expansion, or inflation, in the early universe solves several cosmological problems. While there are many models of inflation only recently has it become possible to discriminate between some of the models using…
We study the domain wall problem of an axion in chaotic inflation models. We show that the production of domain walls does not occurs if the Peccei-Quinn scalar has a flat potential and its breaking $F_{a}$ is larger than $\sim 10^{15}$GeV.…
Banks and Dine have recently shown that the M theory naturally accommodates the Peccei-Quinn axion. Since the decay constant $F_a$ of the axion is large as $F_a \simeq 10^{15}-10^{16}$GeV, the halo axion is hardly detected in coming…
String and M-theory compactifications generically have compact moduli which can potentially act as the QCD axion. However, as demonstrated here, such a compact modulus can not play the role of a QCD axion and solve the strong CP problem if…
Axion rotations can simultaneously explain the dark matter abundance and the baryon asymmetry of the Universe by kinetic misalignment and axiogenesis. We consider a scenario in which the Peccei-Quinn symmetry breaking field is as large as…
We show that the constraints which follow from the {\it Trans-Planckian Censorship Conjecture} for inflationary cosmology can be strengthened if the pre-inflationary universe was dominated by radiation. The resulting upper bound on the…
We investigate the cosmic variance of the skewness of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropies in an inflationary model which leads to the baryon isocurvature scenario for the cosmic structure formation. In this model, the baryon…
We consider inflation in a universe with a positive cosmological constant and a nonminimally coupled scalar field, in which the field couples both quadratically and quartically to the Ricci scalar. When considered in the Einstein frame and…