相关论文: Small-Field and Scale-Free: Inflation and Ekpyrosi…
Some recent studies based on numerical relativity simulations claim that slow contraction/ekpyrosis is strongly preferred over inflation as the smoothing mechanism that brought the universe into the homogeneous, isotropic and flat state we…
The scalar field is considered to have dominated the early Universe. One subtle yet crucial requirement of this assumption is that the solution must be highly stable, i.e., indifferent to any initial conditions because there are no favored…
An important unsolved problem that affects practically all attempts to connect string theory to cosmology and phenomenology is how to distinguish effective field theories belonging to the string landscape from those that are not consistent…
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…
Cosmological inflation is not the only early universe scenario consistent with current observational data. I will discuss the criteria for a successful early universe cosmology, compare a couple of the proposed scenarios (inflation,…
In this review, a number of approaches to superstring cosmology which make use of key features which distinguish string theory from point particle theories are discussed, with particular emphasis on emergent scenarios. One motivation for…
We adopt the double field natural inflation model motivated by the non-perturbative effects of supergravity and superstring theory to do the slow roll analysis. We show that when the parameters are suitably chosen, there exist ranges of…
We obtain cosmological constraints on models of inflation which exhibit rapid roll solutions. Rapid roll attractors exist for potentials with large mass terms and are thus of interest for inflationary model building within string theory. We…
In the framework of scalar-tensor theories of gravity, we construct a new kind of cosmological model that conflates inflation and ekpyrosis. During a phase of conflation, the universe undergoes accelerated expansion, but with crucial…
We derive all single-field cosmologies with unit sound speed that generate scale invariant curvature perturbations on a dynamical attractor background. We identify three distinct phases: slow-roll inflation; a slowly contracting adiabatic…
New Ekpyrotic Cosmology is an alternative scenario of early universe cosmology in which the universe existed before the big bang. The simplest model relies on two scalar fields, whose entropy perturbation leads to a scale-invariant spectrum…
Attempts to connect string theory with astrophysical observation are hampered by a jargon barrier, where an intimidating profusion of orientifolds, Kahler potentials, etc. dissuades cosmologists from attempting to work out the astrophysical…
We have proposed recently a framework for inflation driven by supersymmetry breaking with the inflaton being a superpartner of the goldstino, that avoids the main problems of supergravity inflation, allowing for: naturally small slow-roll…
Hybrid inflation faces two well-known problems: the blue spectrum of the non-supersymmetric version of the model and the fine-tuning of the initial conditions of the fields leading to sufficient inflation to account for the standard…
We study models of modular inflation of the form expected to arise from low energy effective actions of superstring theories. We argue on general grounds that the most likely models of modular slow-roll inflation are small field models in…
Inflationary theory is already 20 years old, and it is impossible to describe all of its versions and implications in a short talk. I will concentrate on several subjects which I believe to be most important. First of all, I will give a…
It has been suggested that low energy effective field theories should satisfy given conditions in order to be successfully embedded into string theory. In the case of a single canonically normalized scalar field this translates into…
Inflationary cosmology proposes that the early Universe undergoes accelerated expansion, driven, in simple scenarios, by a single scalar field, or inflaton. The form of the inflaton potential determines the initial spectra of density…
In this work we shall study $k$-inflation theories with non-minimal coupling of the scalar field to gravity, in the presence of only a higher order kinetic term of the form $\sim \mathrm{const}\times X^{\mu}$, with…
Models of cosmic inflation suggest that our universe underwent an early phase of accelerated expansion, driven by the dynamics of one or more scalar fields. Inflationary models make specific, quantitative predictions for several observable…