相关论文: Decoupling Survives Inflation: A Critical Look at …

Decoupling of heavy modes in effective low energy theory is one of the most fundamental concepts in physics. It tells us that modes must have a negligible effect on the physics of gravitational backgrounds with curvature radius larger than…

We investigate the possible influence of very-high-energy physics on inflationary predictions focussing on whether effective field theories can allow effects which are parametrically larger than order H^2/M^2, where M is the scale of heavy…

We build an effective field theory of multi-field inflationary fluctuations based on the adiabatic perturbation and on any number of matter fluctuations in the non-adiabatic sector, without imposing extra symmetries on the latter. Focusing…

We discuss and clarify the validity of effective single field theories of inflation obtained by integrating out heavy degrees of freedom in the regime where adiabatic perturbations propagate with a suppressed speed of sound. We show by…

We explore the effects of heavy degrees of freedom on the evolution and perturbations of light modes in multifield inflation. We use a simple two-field model as an example to illustrate the subtleties of integrating out massive fields in a…

Effective field theory is a powerful organizing principle that allows to describe physics below a certain scale model-independently. Above that energy scale, identified with the cutoff, the EFT description breaks down and new physics is…

We study models of inflation with two scalar fields and non-canonical kinetic terms, focusing on the case in which the curvature and isocurvature perturbations are strongly coupled to each other. In the regime where a heavy mode can be…

We present the first quantum field theory model of inflation that is renormalizable in the matter sector, with a super-Hubble inflaton mass and sub-Planckian field excursions, which is thus technically natural and consistent with a…

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 study the power spectrum of super-Hubble fluctuations of an inflaton-like scalar field, the "system", coupled to another scalar field, the "environment" during de Sitter inflation. We obtain the reduced density matrix for the inflaton…

This is a version of the author's Ph.D. thesis. The methods of effective field theory are used to study generic theories of inflation with a single inflaton field and to perform a general analysis of the associated non-Gaussianities. We…

We compute the rate with which super-Hubble cosmological fluctuations are decohered during inflation, by their gravitational interactions with unobserved shorter-wavelength scalar and tensor modes. We do so using Open Effective Field Theory…

A scalar potential coupled to other fields of large disparate masses will exhibit power suppression of the quantum loop corrections from these massive fields. Quintessence fields in the dark energy regime and inflaton fields during…

We survey recent calculations probing what constraints decoupling can put on the influence of very-high-energy physics on the predictions of inflation for the cosmic microwave background. Using garden-variety hybrid inflation models we…

The methods of effective field theory are used to study generic theories of inflation with a single inflaton field. For scalar modes, the leading corrections to the ${\cal R}$ correlation function are found to be purely of the $k$-inflation…

The BICEP2 observations, if confirmed, point to a high scale of inflation and large field excursions during the inflationary era. Non-compact string moduli spaces are a suggestive setting for these phenomena. While unlikely to be described…

The "de Sitter constraint" on the space of effective scalar field theories consistent with superstring theory provides a lower bound on the slope of the potential of a scalar field which dominates the evolution of the Universe, e.g., a…

When energy is not conserved, imprints of new physics on observable cosmology might not follow the rules of local effective actions. By capturing dissipative and diffusive effects, open effective field theories account for the possibly…

We generalize the Effective Field Theory of Inflation to include additional light scalar degrees of freedom that are in their vacuum at the time the modes of interest are crossing the horizon. In order to make the scalars light in a natural…

We apply the effective field theory approach to quasi-single field inflation, which contains an additional scalar field with Hubble scale mass other than inflaton. Based on the time-dependent spatial diffeomorphism, which is not broken by…