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The "new standard cosmology", based on the theory of inflation, has very impressive observational support. I review some outstanding problems of the new cosmology and the global view of the universe -- the multiverse -- that it suggests. I focus in particular on prospects for further observational tests of inflation and of the multiverse., Invited talk at TAUP conference, Rome, July 2009

Analytic and numerical techniques are presented for computing gravitational production of scalar particles in the limit that the inflaton mass is much larger than the Hubble expansion rate at the end of inflation. These techniques rely upon adiabatic invariants and time modeling of a typical inflaton field which has slow and fast time variation components. A faster computation time for numerical integration is achieved via subtraction of slowly varying components that are ultimately exponentially suppressed. The fast oscillatory remnant results in production of scalar particles with a mass larger than the inflationary Hubble expansion rate through a mechanism analogous to perturbative particle scattering. An improved effective Boltzmann collision equation description of this particle production mechanism is developed. This model allows computation of the spectrum using only adiabatic invariants, avoiding the need to explicitly solve the inflaton equations of motion., 37 pages, 5 figures

Constant-rate inflation, including ultra-slow-roll as a special case, has been widely applied to the formation of primordial black holes with significant deviation from the standard slow-roll conditions at both the growing and decaying phases of the power spectrum. We derive analytic solutions for the curvature perturbations with respect to the late-time scaling dimensions (conformal weights) constrained by the dilatation symmetry of the de Sitter background and show that the continuity of conformal weights across different rolling phases is protected by the adiabatic condition of the inflaton perturbation. The temporal excitation of subleading states (with the next-to-lowest conformal weights), recorded as the "steepest growth" of the power spectrum, is triggered by the entropy production in the transition from slow-roll to constant-rate phases., Comment: 18 + 4 pages, 6 figures; v2: references added, provided entropy production as a criterion for the steepest growth; v3: minor corrections, version matched with publication

We describe a new phenomenon in quantum cosmology: self-organised localisation. When the fundamental parameters of a theory are functions of a scalar field subject to large fluctuations during inflation, quantum phase transitions can act as dynamical attractors. As a result, the theory parameters are probabilistically localised around the critical value and the Universe finds itself at the edge of a phase transition. We illustrate how self-organised localisation could account for the observed near-criticality of the Higgs self-coupling, the naturalness of the Higgs mass, or the smallness of the cosmological constant., 104 pages, 12 figures. v3: Measure problem discussion extended and references added. Version to be published in JHEP

Quasi-conformal models are an appealing scenario that can offer naturally a strongly supercooled phase transition and a period of thermal inflation in the early Universe. A crucial aspect for the viability of these models is how the Universe escapes from the supercooled state. One possibility is that thermal inflation phase ends by nucleation and percolation of true vacuum bubbles. This route is not, however, always efficient. In such case another escape mechanism, based on the growth of quantum fluctuations of the scalar field that eventually destabilize the false vacuum, becomes relevant. We study both of these cases in detail in a simple yet representative model. We determine the duration of the thermal inflation, the curvature power spectrum generated for the scales that exit horizon during the thermal inflation, and the stochastic gravitational wave background from the phase transition. We show that these gravitational waves provide an observable signal from the thermal inflation in almost the entire parameter space of interest. Furthermore, the shape of the gravitational wave spectrum can be used to ascertain how the Universe escaped from supercooling., Comment: 11 pages, 6 figures. published version

In previous works we have derived a Running Vacuum Model (RVM) for a string Universe, which provides an effective description of the evolution of 4-dimensional string-inspired cosmologies from inflation till the present epoch. In the context of this "stringy RVM" version, it is assumed that the early Universe is characterised by purely gravitational degrees of freedom, from the massless gravitational string multiplet, including the antisymmetric tensor field. The latter plays an important role, since its dual gives rise to a `stiff' gravitational-axion "matter", which in turn couples to the gravitational anomaly terms, assumed to be non-trivial at early epochs. In the presence of primordial gravitational wave (GW) perturbations, such anomalous couplings lead to an RVM-like dynamical inflation, without external inflatons. We review here this framework and discuss potential scenarios for the generation of such primordial GW, among which the formation of unstable domain walls, which eventually collapse in a non-spherical-symmetric manner, giving rise to GW. We also remark that the same type of "stiff" axionic matter could provide, upon the generation of appropriate potentials during the post-inflationary eras, (part of) the Dark Matter (DM) in the Universe, which could well be ultralight, depending on the parameters of the string-inspired model. All in all, the new (stringy) mechanism for RVM-inflation preserves the basic structure of the original (and more phenomenological) RVM, as well as its main advantages: namely, a mechanism for graceful exit and for generating a huge amount of entropy capable of explaining the horizon problem. It also predicts axionic DM and the existence of mild dynamical Dark Energy (DE) of quintessence type in the present universe, both being "living fossils" of the inflationary stages of the cosmic evolution., Comment: 75 pages revtex, 6 pdf figures incorporated

We study the effects of particle production on the evolution of the inflaton field in an axion monodromy model with the goal of discovering in which situations the resulting dynamics will be consistent with the swampland constraints. In the presence of a modulated potential the evolving background field (solution of the inflaton homogeneous in space) induces the production of long wavelength inflaton fluctuation modes. However, this either has a negligible effect on the inflaton dynamics (if the field spacing between local minima of the modulated potential is large), or else it traps the inflaton in a local minimum and leads to a graceful exit problem. On the other hand, the production of moduli fields at enhanced symmetry points can lead to a realization of trapped inflation consistent with the swampland constraints, as long as the coupling between the inflaton and the moduli fields is sufficiently large., The European Physical Journal C, 81 (2), ISSN:1434-6044, ISSN:1434-6052

Contracting cosmologies are known to be flawed with a shear instability, where the contribution from the anisotropic stress to the overall energy density grows as $a^{-6}$, with $a$ the scale factor. Classically, whether or not this contribution becomes important before the bounce depends on its initial value, which can always be sufficiently fine tuned to make it irrelevant. However, vacuum quantum fluctuations inevitably provide a non-vanishing source of anisotropic stress. In this work, we compute the minimum amount of shear that is obtained if one assumes that it vanishes initially, but lets quantum fluctuations build it up. In practice, we consider a massless test scalar field, and describe its quantum fluctuations by means of the stochastic "inflation" (though here applied to a contracting phase) formalism. We find that, if the equation-of-state parameter of the contraction satisfies $w>-1/9$, regardless of when the contracting phase is initiated, the time at which the shear becomes sizeable is always when the Hubble scale approaches the Planck mass (which is also where the bounce is expected to take place). However, if $w, Comment: matches the published version in EPJC

Inflation driven by a generic self-gravitating medium is an interesting alternative to study the impact of spontaneous spacetime symmetry breaking during a quasi de-Sitter phase, in particular the 4-dimensional diffeomorphism invariance of GR is spontaneously broken down to $ISO(3)$. The effective description is based on four scalar fields that describe the excitations of a supersolid. There are two phonon-like propagating scalar degrees of freedom that mix non-trivially both at early and late times and, after exiting the horizon, give rise to non-trivial correlations among the different scalar power spectra. The non-linear structure of the theory allows a secondary gravitational waves production during inflation, efficient enough to saturate the present experimental bound and with a blue-tilted spectral index., Comment: 32 pages, 8 figures. Few typos corrected and comments added

We study M-theory compactified on twisted 7-tori with $G_2$-holonomy. The effective 4d supergravity has 7 chiral multiplets, each with a unit logarithmic K\"ahler potential. We propose octonion, Fano plane based superpotentials, codifying the error correcting Hamming (7,4) code. The corresponding 7-moduli models have Minkowski vacua with one flat direction. We also propose superpotentials based on octonions/error correcting codes for Minkowski vacua models with two flat directions. We update phenomenological $\alpha$-attractor models of inflation with $3\alpha=7,6,5,4,3,1$, based on inflation along these flat directions. These inflationary models reproduce the benchmark targets for detecting B-modes, predicting 7 different values of $r = 12\alpha/N_{e}^{2}$ in the range $10^{-2}\gtrsim r \gtrsim 10^{-3}$, to be explored by future cosmological observations., Comment: 63 pages, 25 figures, v2: comments added, typos fixed, v3: improved formulation presented in Sec.7 and refs added. The new formulation does not change inflationary predictions, but the potentials for decoupled heavy modes are simplified compared with the ones in the previous versions

The NANOGrav pulsar timing array experiment reported evidence for a stochastic common-spectrum process affecting pulsar timing residuals in its 12.5-year dataset, which might be interpreted as the first detection of a stochastic gravitational wave background (SGWB). I examine whether the NANOGrav signal might be explained by an inflationary SGWB, focusing on the implications for the tensor spectral index $n_T$ and the tensor-to-scalar ratio $r$. Explaining NANOGrav while complying with upper limits on $r$ from BICEP2/Keck Array and Planck requires $r \gtrsim {\cal O}(10^{-6})$ in conjunction with an extremely blue tensor spectrum, $0.7 \lesssim n_T \lesssim 1.3$. After discussing models which can realize such a blue spectrum, I show that this region of parameter space can be brought in agreement with Big Bang Nucleosynthesis constraints for a sufficiently low reheating scale, $T_{\rm rh} \lesssim 100\,{\rm GeV}-1\,{\rm TeV}$. With the important caveat of having assumed a power-law parametrization for the primordial tensor spectrum, an inflationary interpretation of the NANOGrav signal is therefore not excluded., 5 pages, 2 figures. v2: revised conclusions, NANOGrav can in principle be due to an inflationary SGWB provided the reheating temperature is sufficiently (=very) low. References added, version accepted for publication in MNRAS Letters. Comments are welcome

The recent observations from CMB have imposed a very stringent upper-limit on the tensor/scalar ratio $r$ of inflation models, $r < 0.064$, which indicates that the primordial gravitational waves (PGW), even though possible to be detected, should have a power spectrum of a tiny amplitude. However, current experiments on PGW is ambitious to detect such a signal by improving the accuracy to an even higher level. Whatever their results are, it will give us much information about the early Universe, not only from the astrophysical side but also from the theoretical side, such as model building for the early Universe. In this paper, we are interested in analyzing what kind of inflation models can be favored by future observations, starting with a kind of general action offered by the effective field theory (EFT) approach. We show a general form of $r$ that can be reduced to various models, and more importantly, we show how the accuracy of future observations can put constraints on model parameters by plotting the contours in their parameter spaces., 19 pages, 9 figures with title changed and contents improved

We propose a novel explanation for the smallness of the observed cosmological constant (CC). Regions of space with a large CC are short lived and are dynamically driven to crunch soon after the end of inflation. Conversely, regions with a small CC are metastable and long lived and are the only ones to survive until late times. While the mechanism assumes many domains with different CC values, it does not result in eternal inflation nor does it require a long period of inflation to populate them. We present a concrete dynamical model, based on a super-cooled first order phase transition in a hidden conformal sector, that may successfully implement such a crunching mechanism. We find that the mechanism can only solve the CC problem up to the weak scale, above which new physics, such as supersymmetry, is needed to solve the CC problem all the way to the UV cutoff scale. The absence of experimental evidence for such new physics already implies a mild little hierarchy problem for the CC. Curiously, in this approach the weak scale arises as the geometric mean of the temperature in our universe today and the Planck scale, hinting at a new “CC miracle”, motivating new physics at the weak scale independent of electroweak physics. We further predict the presence of new relativistic degrees of freedom in the CFT that should be visible in the next round of CMB experiments. Our mechanism is therefore predictive and experimentally falsifiable.

We study the production of massive gauge bosons during inflation from the axion-type coupling to the inflaton and the corresponding oscillatory features in the primordial non-Gaussianity. In a window in which both the gauge boson mass and the chemical potential are large, the signal is potentially reachable by near-future large scale structure probes. This scenario covers a new region in oscillation frequency which is not populated by previously known cosmological collider models. We also demonstrate how to properly include the exponential factor and discuss the subtleties in obtaining power dependence of the gauge boson mass in the signal estimate., 25 pages

Most of the inflationary models that are in agreement with the Planck data rely on the presence of non-renormalizable operators. If the connection to low energy particle physics is made, the renormalization group (RG) introduces a sensitivity to ultraviolet (UV) physics that can be crucial in determining the inflationary predictions. We analyse this effect for the Standard Model (SM) augmented with non-minimal derivative couplings to gravity. Our set-up reduces to the SM for small values of the Higgs field, and allows for inflation in the opposite large field regime. The one-loop beta functions in the inflationary region are calculated using a covariant approach that properly accounts for the non-trivial structure of the field space manifold. We run the SM parameters from the electroweak to the inflationary scale, matching the couplings of the different effective field theories at the boundary between the two regimes, where we also include threshold corrections that parametrize effects from UV physics. We then compute the spectral index and tensor-to-scalar ratio and find that RG flow corrections can be determinant: a scenario that is ruled out at tree level can be resurrected and vice versa., Comment: 35 pages, 5 figures

Requiring the existence of a unitary, causal and local UV-completion places a set of positivity bounds on the corresponding effective field theories (EFTs). We discuss the obstructions and possibility in applying the positivity bound to cosmology, in particular the EFT of cosmological perturbations. Taking a $c_T=1$ beyond-Horndeski EFT as an illustrative example, we derive such bounds, which incorporate the cosmological correction of order $H^2/\Lambda^2$, $\Lambda$ being the cutoff scale. The derived bounds are applied to slow-roll inflation with beyond Horndeski operators. It is found that the cosmological positivity bounds may be either stronger or weaker than their flat space counterpart., Comment: 24 pages, 2 figures; major revision; matched published version in EPJC

We investigate a model of inflationary cosmology where the minimally coupled scalar field theory is modified by additional correction terms. Among the most general ten correction terms remarked by Weinberg in context of effective field theory, we consider only two terms, $f_1(\phi) R^2$ and $f_2(\phi) R^{ab}R_{ab}$, following the work by Noh and Hwang where $f_1$ and $f_2$ are constant. The fourth order differential equations for the background universe and the tensor-type perturbation are derived out of this model. We show that these equations can be reduced to second order equations, supposing that $f_n$ are small. From these approximated equations, we find that the propagation speed of gravitational wave is slightly less than the speed of light due to $f_2$ term, and that the evolution of the tensor-type perturbation is conserved in the large scale limit.

In Einstein's Field Equation(EFE) the geometry of the space-time is connected with the matter distribution. The geometry or the gravitational sector deals with classical macroscopic objects involving gravitational units while the matter sector can be better described by quantum theory involving atomic units. It has been argued by Bisabr that there exists an epoch-dependent conversion factor between these two unit systems present in two different conformal frames,i.e. the conformal factor is epoch dependent. We argue that the conformal transformation is a dynamical degree of freedom describing it's possible relevance in inflation in context to the graceful exit problem, dynamics of the cosmological constant {\Lambda} and justify the argument in the light of consequences of Dirac's Large Number hypothesis(LNH)., Comment: 11 Pages, Previously this version appeared as arXiv:2005.09458v2 which was submitted as a replacement work by accident

We search for effective axions with super-Planckian decay constants in type IIB string models. We argue that such axions can be realised as long winding trajectories in complex-structure moduli space by an appropriate flux choice. Our main findings are: The simplest models with aligned winding in a 2-axion field space fail due to a general no-go theorem. However, equally simple models with misaligned winding, where the effective axion is not close to any of the fundamental axions, appear to work to the best of our present understanding. These models have large decay constants but no large monotonic regions in the potential, making them unsuitable for large-field inflation. We also show that our no-go theorem can be avoided by aligning three or more axions. We argue that, contrary to misaligned models, such models can have both large decay constants and large monotonic regions in the potential. Our results may be used to argue against the refined Swampland Distance Conjecture and strong forms of the axionic Weak Gravity Conjecture. It becomes apparent, however, that realising inflation is by far harder than just producing a light field with large periodicity., Comment: 45 pages. v2: minor improvements and added reference

We consider the possibility of extra spinning particles during inflation, focussing on the spin-2 case. Our analysis relies on the well-known fully non-linear formulation of interacting spin-2 theories. We explore the parameter space of the corresponding inflationary Lagrangian and identify regions therein exhibiting signatures within reach of upcoming CMB probes. We provide a thorough study of the early and late-time dynamics ensuring that stability conditions are met throughout the cosmic evolution. We characterise in particular the gravitational wave spectrum and three-point function finding a local-type non-Gaussianity whose amplitude may be within the sensitivity range of both the LiteBIRD and CMB-S4 experiments., 30 pages, 6 figures; v2 -- references added, minor changes, accepted for publication in JCAP

Oscillons are long-lived, localized, oscillating nonlinear excitations of a real scalar field which can be abundantly produced during preheating after inflation. We give the first $(3+1)$-dimensional simulation for the oscillon formation during preheating with noncanonical kinetic terms, e.g. the Dirac-Born-Infeld form, and find that the formation of oscillons is significantly influenced by the noncanonical effect., Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures; more results added, version accepted for publication in PLB

In the early universe it is important to take into account quantum effect of the gravity to explain the feature of the inflation. In this paper, we consider the M-theory effective action which consists of 11 dimensional supergravity and (Weyl)$^4$ terms. The equations of motion are solved perturbatively, and the solution describes the inflation-like expansion in 4 dimensional spacetime. Scalar and tensor perturbations around this background are evaluated analytically and their behaviors are investigated numerically. If we assume that these perturbations are constant at the beginning of the inflation, spectral indices for scalar and tensor perturbations become almost scale invariant., Comment: 21 pages, 5 figures, a reference added

An alternative scenario about the phenomenology of primordial Universe is k-inflation. According to this concept, inflation can be achieved by nonstandard kinetic term of scalar field, namely the inflaton. In this project we focus on k-essence models in the presence of a higher order and a linear kinetic term. Furthermore, the inflationary phenomenology with a Dirac-Born-Infeld scalar field is briefly examined, which arises from quantum theories of gravity such as superstring theory. Our approach about the inflationary era is that it can be described in the context of Einstein's gravity involving quantum corrections such as the Chern-Simons string inspired parity violating gravitational term. The equations of motion namely, the Friedmann equation, the Raychadhuri equation and the Klein-Gordon equation for an expanding background are extracted from the gravitational action utilizing the variational principle. The consequential system of differential equations with respect to Hubble's parameter and the inflaton field was quite perplexed in order to be solved with an analytic way. Therefore, the slow-roll conditions during inflationary era were imposed and terms with minor numerically contribution were neglected. From the overall phenomenological analysis it is proved that, models with exotic kinetic terms can generate viable results in consistency with the latest Planck data. Finally, the presence of Chern-Simons quantum corrections shifts the primordial spectral tensor index to blue. Even though blue gravitational waves have yet to be observed, if detected, compatibility with the aforementioned theory can be achieved., Accepted in International Journal of Modern Physics A. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:2107.09457

Primordial blackholes formed in the early Universe via gravitational collapse of over-dense regions may contribute a significant amount to the present dark matter relic density. Inflation provides a natural framework for the production mechanism of primordial blackholes. For example, single field inflation models with a fine-tuned scalar potential may exhibit a period of ultra-slow roll, during which the curvature perturbation may be enhanced to become seeds of the primordial blackholes formed as the corresponding scales reenter the horizon. In this work, we propose an alternative mechanism for the primordial blackhole formation. We consider a model in which a scalar field is coupled to the Gauss-Bonnet term and show that primordial blackholes may be seeded when a scalar potential term and the Gauss-Bonnet coupling term are nearly balanced. Large curvature perturbation in this model not only leads to the production of primordial blackholes but it also sources gravitational waves at the second order. We calculate the present density parameter of the gravitational waves and discuss the detectability of the signals by comparing them with sensitivity bounds of future gravitational wave experiments., Comment: v1: 9 pages, 3 figures; v2: 10 pages, 3 figures, references updated, version accepted for publication in PRD

We embed natural inflation in an explict string theory model and derive observables in cosmology. We achieve this by compactifying the type IIB string on a Calabi-Yau orientifold, stabilizing moduli via the Large Volume Scenario, and configuring axions using D7-brane stacks. In order to obtain a large effective decay constant, we employ the Kim-Nilles-Peloso alignment mechanism, with the required multiple axions arising naturally from anisotropic bulk geometries. The bulk volumes, and hence the axion decay constants, are stabilized by generalized one-loop corrections and subject to various conditions: the K\"ahler cone condition on the string geometry; the convex hull condition of the weak gravity conjecture; and the constraint from the power spectrum of scalar perturbations. We find that all constraints can be satisfied in a geometry with relatively small volume and thus heavy bulk axion mass. We also covariantize the convex hull condition for the axion-dilaton-instanton system and verify the normalization of the extremal bound., Comment: 54 pages, 8 figures

Models of inflationary cosmology admit a choice of the metric for which the geometry of homogeneous isotropic solutions becomes flat Minkowski space in the infinite past. In this primordial flat frame all mass scales vanish in the infinite past and quantum scale symmetry is realized. The cosmological evolution is dominantly described by the slow increase of a scalar field which sets the scale of all masses. We construct the primordial flat frame for standard models of inflation as Starobinsky inflation or chaotic inflation. In particular, we discuss the evolution of inhomogeneous solutions in the neighborhood of the homogeneous isotropic background solution and their relation to the observable primordial fluctuation spectrum. If the propagators for the graviton and scalar field remain regular, our observed inhomogeneous Universe can be extrapolated back to the infinite past in physical time. In this case there is no physical big-bang singularity -- the latter reflects only a singular choice of ``field coordinates". Independently of the issue of singularity the primordial flat frame offers a new view on the physical properties of the inflationary universe, which can be characterized as a very slowly evolving almost empty vacuum state with approximate scale symmetry., additional discussion of inhomogeneous cosmological solutions and big bang singularity , 31 pages

Swampland Conjectures have attracted quite some interest in the Cosmological Community. They have been shown to have wide ranging implications , like Constraints on Inflationary Models, Primordial Black Holes etc. to name a few. A particularly revealing insight on dark energy also shows that one can have the dark energy equation of state for a quintessence scenario to be signficantly different than -1 after one takes into account the refined dS conjecture. Another interesting issue with the swampland conjectures is that they have been shown to be incompatible with single field inflationary models in GR based cosmology. In our previous work we have, however, showed that single field inflationary models are quite compatible with swampland conjectures in their usual string theoretic form in a large class of modified cosmological scenarios. Building on that work, we now show that in modified cosmological scenarios where the early universe expansion was driven by single field inflation , one can have the dark energy equation of state to be significantly different from -1 even if we just take into account the original dS conjecture, let alone the refined form of that. We thereby show that one does not need to apply a step function approach towards inflation in order to have an observable distinction between constant and non constant dark energy models in the context of the swampland conjectures., Comment: v2, 9 pages long with added references and minor details

Within the framework of inflationary model with field-dependent kinetic term for quartic and natural potentials, we investigate generation of the primordial black holes (PBHs) and induced gravitational waves (GWs). In this setup, we consider a kinetic function as $G(\phi)=g_I(\phi)\big(1+g_{II}(\phi)\big)$ and show that in the presence of first term $g_I(\phi)$ both quartic and natural potentials, in contrast to the standard model of inflation, can be consistent, with the 68\% CL of Planck observations. Besides, the second term $g_{II}(\phi)$ can cause a significant enhancement in the primordial curvature perturbations at the small scales which results the PBHs formation. For the both potentials, we obtain an enhancement in the scalar power spectrum at the scales $k\sim10^{12}~\rm Mpc^{-1}$, $10^{8}~\rm Mpc^{-1}$, and $10^{5}~\rm Mpc^{-1}$, which causes PBHs production in mass scales around $10^{-13}M_{\odot}$, $10^{-5}M_{\odot}$, and $10 M_{\odot}$, respectively. Observational constraints confirm that PBHs with a mass scale of $10^{-13}M_{\odot}$ can constitute the total of dark matter in the universe. Furthermore, we estimate the energy density parameter of induced GWs which can be examined by the observation. Also we conclude that it can be parametrized as a power-law function $\Omega_{\rm GW}\sim (f/f_c)^n$, where the power index equals $n=3-2/\ln(f_c/f)$ in the infrared limit $f\ll f_{c}$., Comment: 25 pages, 7 figures, 5 tables

We propose an experiment that the entanglement between two macroscopic mirrors suspended at the end of an equal-arm interferometer is destroyed by the noise of gravitons through bremsstrahlung. By calculating the correlation function of the noise, we obtain the decoherence time from the decoherence functional. We estimate that the decoherence time induced by the noise of gravitons in squeezed states stemming from inflation is approximately 20 seconds for 40 km long arms and 40 kg mirrors. Our analysis shows that observation of the decoherence time of quantum entanglement has the potential to detect gravitons indirectly. This indirect detection of gravitons would give strong evidence of quantum gravity., Comment: 5 pages, 2 figures

In addition to spectacular signatures such as black hole superradiance and the rotation of CMB polarization, the plenitude of axions appearing in the string axiverse may have potentially dangerous implications. An example is the cosmological overproduction of relic axions and moduli by the misalignment mechanism, more pronounced in regions where the signals mentioned above may be observable, that is for large axion decay constant. In this work, we study the minimal requirements to soften this problem and show that the fundamental requirement is a long period of low-scale inflation. However, in this case, if the inflationary Hubble scale is lower than around $O(100)$ eV, no relic DM axion is produced in the early Universe. Cosmological production of some axions may be activated, via the misalignment mechanism, if their potential minimum changes between inflation and today. As a particular example, we study in detail how the maximal-misalignment mechanism dilutes the effect of dangerous axions and allows the production of axion DM in a controlled way. In this case, the potential of the axion that realises the mechanism shifts by a factor $\Delta\theta=\pi$ between the inflationary epoch and today, and the axion starts to oscillate from the top of its potential. We also show that axions with masses $m_a\sim O(1-100)\, H_0$ realising the maximal-misalignment mechanism generically behave as dark energy with a decay constant that can take values well below the Planck scale, avoiding problems associated to super-Planckian scales. Finally, we briefly study the basic phenomenological implications of the mechanism and comment on the compatibility of this type of maximally-misaligned quintessence with the swampland criteria., Comment: 45 pages, 6 figures; v2: references added, accepted for publication in JHEP

In this work we shall introduce a theoretical framework comprised by a non-minimal coupled canonical scalar field, a non-minimal coupling to the Gauss-Bonnet invariant and a non-minimal kinetic coupling. This theoretical framework is basically a non-minimally coupled Einstein-Gauss-Bonnet theory with extra corrections of the form of a non-minimal kinetic coupling. In order to comply with the GW170817 event, we shall impose a constraint on the propagation speed of the primordial tensor perturbations that it is equal to that of light's in vacuum, and this constraint basically specifies the way that the scalar potential and the non-minimal couplings of the theory can be chosen. The whole theoretical framework, which belongs to the larger class of Horndeski theories, cannot yield viable results, due to the fact that the primordial gravitational wave speed is not equal to that of light's. Thus we study this theory by also imposing the constraint of having gravity wave speed equal to the light speed. We directly examine the inflationary phenomenology of our theoretical framework and by assuming the slow-roll conditions, we derived the equations of motion in such a way so that analytical results may be extracted. By using several well motivated models we demonstrate the framework leads to a viable phenomenology., NPB accepted

We extend the cosmological bootstrap to correlators involving massless particles with spin. In de Sitter space, these correlators are constrained both by symmetries and by locality. In particular, the de Sitter isometries become conformal symmetries on the future boundary of the spacetime, which are reflected in a set of Ward identities that the boundary correlators must satisfy. We solve these Ward identities by acting with weight-shifting operators on scalar seed solutions. Using this weight-shifting approach, we derive three- and four-point correlators of massless spin-1 and spin-2 fields with conformally coupled scalars. Four-point functions arising from tree-level exchange are singular in particular kinematic configurations, and the coefficients of these singularities satisfy certain factorization properties. We show that in many cases these factorization limits fix the structure of the correlators uniquely, without having to solve the conformal Ward identities. The additional constraint of locality for massless spinning particles manifests itself as current conservation on the boundary. We find that the four-point functions only satisfy current conservation if the s, t, and u-channels are related to each other, leading to nontrivial constraints on the couplings between the conserved currents and other operators in the theory. For spin-1 currents this implies charge conservation, while for spin-2 currents we recover the equivalence principle from a purely boundary perspective. For multiple spin-1 fields, we recover the structure of Yang-Mills theory. Finally, we apply our methods to slow-roll inflation and derive a few phenomenologically relevant scalar-tensor three-point functions., 128 pages, 15 figures; V3: minor corrections and references added

We study the intermediate inflation in the mimetic Dirac-Born-Infeld model. By considering the scale factor as $a=a_{0}\exp(bt^{\beta})$, we show that in some ranges of the intermediate parameters $b$ and $\beta$, the model is free of the ghost and gradient instabilities. We study the scalar spectral index, tensor spectral index, and the tensor-to-scalar ratio in this model and compare the results with Planck2018 TT, TE, EE+lowE+lensing +BAO +BK14 data at $68\%$ and $95\%$ CL. In this regard, we find some constraints on the intermediate parameters that lead to the observationally viable values of the perturbation parameters. We also seek the non-gaussian features of the primordial perturbations in the equilateral configuration. By performing the numerical analysis on the nonlinearity parameter in this configuration, we show that the amplitude of the non-gaussianity in the intermediate mimetic DBI model is predicted to be in the range $-16.7, Comment: 24 pages, 9 figures, 2 tables

We perform a general analysis of the cosmological viability of Geometric Inflation. We show that the evolution of the universe, from inflation to the present day, can be seen from the addition of an infinite tower of curvature invariants into the Hilbert-Einstein action. The main epochs of the Universe can be reproduced: Inflation, Big Bang Nucleosynthesis, and Late-time acceleration driven by the cosmological constant. The slow-roll condition is a robust prediction of the theory. Inflation possesses a graceful exit with enough number of $e-$folds between the limit imposed by the Planck density and the exit of the exponential expansion to solve the horizon problem and the absence of topological defects. We also provide some scenarios where the energy scale of the theory can be calibrated., 17 pages, 4 figures. Accepted for publication in Physics of the Dark Universe (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dark.2021.100887)

We study the evolution of the Universe at early stages; we discuss also preheating in the framework of hybrid braneworld inflation by setting conditions on the coupling constants $$\lambda $$ and g for effective production of $$\chi $$ -particles. Considering the phase between the time observable CMB scales crossed the horizon and the present time, we write reheating and preheating parameters $$N_{re}$$ , $$T_{re}$$ and $$N_{pre}$$ in terms of the scalar spectral index $$n_{s}$$ and prove that, unlike the reheating case, the preheating duration does not depend on the values of the equation of state $$\omega ^{*}$$ . We apply the slow-roll approximation in the high energy limit to constrain the parameters of D-term hybrid potential. We show also that some inflationary parameters, in particular, the spectral index $$n_{s}$$ demand that the potential parameter $$\alpha $$ is bounded as $$\alpha \ge 1$$ to be consistent with Planck’s data, while the ratio r is in agreement with observation for $$ \alpha \le 1 $$ considering high inflationary e-folds. We also propose an investigation of the brane tension effect on the reheating temperature. Comparing our results to recent CMB measurements, we study preheating and reheating parameters $$N_{re}$$ , $$T_{re}$$ and $$N_{pre}$$ in the Hybrid D-term inflation model in the range $$0.8\le \alpha \le 1.1$$ and conclude that $$T_{re}$$ and $$N_{re}$$ require $$\alpha \le 1$$ , while for $$N_{pre}$$ the condition $$\alpha \le 0.9$$ must be satisfied, to be compatible with Planck’s results.

In this article, we discuss the mechanism for generating the lepton/baryon number and its subsequent conservation based on extradimensional evolution. The internal angular momentum of extra space is related to the lepton/baryon charge. Extra space metric are assumed to be initially asymmetric. Symmetries appear during inflation due to an increase in entropy. Using the multidimensional field toy model, we show that internal angular momentum can accumulate in fermions, which could explain the lepton/baryon asymmetry of the Universe., 15 pages

Primordial gravitational waves (GWs) carry the imprints of the dynamics of the universe during its earliest stages. With a variety of GW detectors being proposed to operate over a wide range of frequencies, there is great expectation that observations of primordial GWs can provide us with an unprecedented window to the physics operating during inflation and reheating. In this work, we closely examine the effects of the regime of reheating on the spectrum of primordial GWs observed today. We consider a scenario wherein the phase of reheating is described by an averaged equation of state (EoS) parameter with an abrupt transition to radiation domination as well as a scenario wherein there is a gradual change in the effective EoS parameter to that of radiation due to the perturbative decay of the inflaton. We show that the perturbative decay of the inflaton leads to oscillations in the spectrum of GWs, which, if observed, can possibly help us decipher finer aspects of the reheating mechanism. We also examine the effects of a secondary phase of reheating arising due to a brief epoch driven possibly by an exotic, non-canonical, scalar field. Interestingly, we find that, for suitable values of the EoS parameter governing the secondary phase of reheating, the GWs can be of the strength as suggested by the recent NANOGrav observations. We conclude with a discussion of the wider implications of our analysis., Comment: PRD accepted

In this letter we clarify that the monopole problem can always be solved in bosonic holographic cosmology, by the analogue of "dilution" in inflation, which is the fact that the {\em electric} current is an irrelevant operator in the dual field theory. We show that not only specific toy models solve the problem, but any purely bosonic member of the phenomenological class, of super-renormalizable, generalized conformal symmetric models., 8 pages, 2 figures

The Higgs field is an attractive candidate for the inflaton because it is an observationally confirmed fundamental scalar field. Importantly, it can be modeled by the most general renormalizable scalar potential. However, if the classical Higgs potential is used in models of inflation, it is ruled out by detailed observations of the cosmic microwave background. Here, a new application of non-adiabatic quantum dynamics to cosmological models is shown to lead to a multi-field Higgs-like potential, consistent with observations of a slightly red-tilted power spectrum and a small tensor-to-scalar ratio, without requiring non-standard ingredients. These methods naturally lead to novel effects in the beginning of inflation, circumventing common fine-tuning issues by an application of uncertainty relations to estimate the initial quantum fluctuations in the early universe. Moreover, inflation ends smoothly as a consequence of the derived multi-field interactions., 16 pages, 5 figures

Little is known about dark matter beyond the fact that it does not interact with the standard model or itself, or else does so incredibly weakly. A natural candidate, given the history of no-go theorems against their interactions, are higher spin fields. Here we develop the scenario of higher spin (spin $s>2$) dark matter. We show that the gravitational production of superheavy bosonic higher spin fields during inflation can provide all the dark matter we observe today. We consider the observable signatures, and find a potential characteristic signature of bosonic higher spin dark matter in directional direct detection; we find that there are distinct spin-dependent contributions to the double differential recoil rate, which complement the oscillatory imprint of higher spin fields in the cosmic microwave background. We consider the extension to higher spin fermions and supersymmetric higher spins., 11 pages, 2 figures

We compute numerically the reheating temperature due to the gravitational production of conformally coupled superheavy particles during the phase transition from the end of inflation to the beginning of kination in two different Quintessential Inflation (QI) scenarios, namely Lorentzian Quintessential Inflation (LQI) and $\alpha$-attractors in the context of Quintessential Inflation ($\alpha$-QI). Once these superheavy particles have been created, they must decay into lighter ones to form a relativistic plasma, whose energy density will eventually dominate the one of the inflaton field in order to reheat after inflation our universe with a very high temperature, in both cases greater than $10^7$ GeV, contrary to the usual belief that heavy masses suppress the particle production and, thus, lead to an inefficient reheating temperature. Finally, we will show that the over-production of Gravitational Waves (GWs) during this phase transition, when one deals with our models, does not disturb the Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN) success., Comment: 15 pages, 7 figures. 1 reference added. Version accepted for publication in PRD. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1903.01181

We develop sequestered inflation models, where inflation occurs along flat directions in supergravity models derived from type IIB string theory. It is compactified on a ${\mathbb{T}^6 \over \mathbb{Z}_2 \times \mathbb{Z}_2}$ orientifold with generalized fluxes and O3/O7-planes. At Step I, we use flux potentials which 1) satisfy tadpole cancellation conditions and 2) have supersymmetric Minkowski vacua with flat direction(s). The 7 moduli are split into heavy and massless Goldstone multiplets. At Step II we add a nilpotent multiplet and uplift the flat direction(s) of the type IIB string theory to phenomenological inflationary plateau potentials: $\alpha$-attractors with 7 discrete values $3\alpha = 1, 2, 3, ..., 7$. Their cosmological predictions are determined by the hyperbolic geometry inherited from string theory. The masses of the heavy fields and the volume of the extra dimensions change during inflation, but this does not affect the inflationary dynamics., Comment: 24pages, 7 figures, v2: reference added, accepted for publication in Fortschritte der Physik, v3: addendum after BICEP/Keck18 release added in Sec. 7

One contribution to any dark sector's abundance comes from its gravitational production during inflation. If the dark sector is weakly coupled to the inflaton and the Standard Model, this can be its only production mechanism. For non-interacting dark sectors, such as a free massive fermion or a free massive vector field, this mechanism has been studied extensively. In this paper we show, via the example of dark massive QED, that the presence of interactions can result in a vastly different mass for the dark matter (DM) particle, which may well coincide with the range probed by upcoming experiments. In the context of dark QED we study the evolution of the energy density in the dark sector after inflation. Inflation produces a cold vector condensate consisting of an enormous number of bosons, which via interesting processes - Schwinger pair production, strong field electromagnetic cascades, and plasma dynamics - transfers its energy to a small number of "dark electrons" and triggers thermalization of the dark sector. The resulting dark electron DM mass range is from 50 MeV to 30 TeV, far different from both the $10^{-5}$ eV mass of the massive photon dark matter in the absence of dark electrons, and from the $10^9$ GeV dark electron mass in the absence of dark photons. This can significantly impact the search strategies for dark QED and, more generally, theories with a self-interacting DM sector. In the presence of kinetic mixing, a dark electron in this mass range can be searched for with upcoming direct detection experiments, such as SENSEI-100g and OSCURA., 33+51 pages, 19 figures; v2: references added, expanded App. B

We explore the inflationary dynamics leading to formation of closed domain walls in course of evolution of an axion like particle (ALP) field whose Peccei-Quinn-like phase transition occurred well before inflationary epoch. Evolving after inflation, the domain walls may leave their imprint in stochastic gravitational waves background, in the frequency range accessible for the pulsar timing array measurements. We derive the characteristic strain power spectrum produced by the distribution of the closed domain walls and relate it with the recently reported NANOGrav signal excess. We found that the slope of the frequency dependence of the characteristic strain spectrum generated by the domain walls is very well centered inside the range of the slopes in the signal reported by the NANOGrav. Analyzing the inflationary dynamics of the ALP field, in consistency with the isocurvature constraint, we revealed those combinations of the parameters where the signal from the inflationary induced ALPs domain walls could saturate the amplitude of the NANOGrav excess. The evolution of big enough closed domain walls may incur in formation of wormholes with the walls escaping into baby universes. We studied the conditions, when closed walls escaped into baby universes could leave a detectable imprint in the stochastic gravitational waves background., 39 pages, 3 figures, the version accepted for publication in Physical Review D

We propose a new construction of the supergravity inflation as an UV completion of the Higgs-$R^2$ inflation. In the dual description of $R^2$-supergravity, we show that there appear dual chiral superfields containing the scalaron or sigma field in the Starobinsky inflation, which unitarizes the supersymmetric Higgs inflation with a large non-minimal coupling up to the Planck scale. We find that a successful slow-roll inflation is achievable in the Higgs-sigma field space, but under the condition that higher curvature terms are introduced to cure the tachyonic mass problems for spectator singlet scalar fields. We also discuss supersymmetry breaking and its transmission to the visible sector as a result of the couplings of the dual chiral superfields and the non-minimal gravity coupling of the Higgs fields., 32 pages, 5 figures. v2 : Minor corrections, references added

In the framework of classical scale invariance, we consider quadratic gravity in the Palatini formalism and investigate the inflationary predictions of the theory. Our model corresponds to a two-field scalar-tensor theory, that involves the Higgs field and an extra scalar field stemming from a gauge $U(1)_X$ extension of the Standard Model, which contains an extra gauge boson and three right-handed neutrinos. Both scalar fields couple nonminimally to gravity and induce the Planck scale dynamically, once they develop vacuum expectation values. By means of the Gildener-Weinberg approach, we describe the inflationary dynamics in terms of a single scalar degree of freedom along the flat direction of the tree-level potential. The one-loop effective potential in the Einstein frame exhibits plateaus on both sides of the minimum and thus the model can accommodate both small and large field inflation. The inflationary predictions of the model are found to comply with the latest bounds set by the Planck collaboration for a wide range of parameters and the effect of the quadratic in curvature terms is to reduce the value of the tensor-to-scalar ratio., Comment: matches version to be published in PRD

Inflationary era of our Universe can be characterized as semi-classical because it can be described in the context of four-dimensional Einsteins's gravity involving quantum corrections. These string motivated corrections originate from quantum theories of gravity such as superstring theories and include higher gravitational terms as, Gauss-Bonnet and Chern-Simons terms. In this paper we investigated inflationary phenomenology coming from a scalar field, with quadratic curvature terms in the view of GW170817. Firstly, we derived the equations of motion, directly from the gravitational action. As a result, formed a system of differential equations with respect to Hubble's parameter and the inflaton field which was very complicated and cannot be solved analytically, even in the minimal coupling case. Based on the observations from GW170817, which have shown that the speed of the primordial gravitational wave is equal to the speed of light, our equations of motion where simplified after applying this constraint, the slow-roll approximations and neglecting the string corrections. We described the dynamics of inflationary phenomenology and proved that theories with Gauss-Bonnet term can be compatible with recent observations. Also, the Chern-Simons term leads to asymmetric generation and evolution of the two circular polarization states of gravitational wave. Finally, viable inflationary models are presented, consistent with the observational constraints. The possibility of a blue tilted tensor spectral index is briefly investigated., Accepted in General Relativity and Gravitation journal, Springer

We study the possibility of the Primordial Black Holes (PBHs) formation with the aim of finding a considerable fraction of Dark Matter (DM), using the gravitationally enhanced friction mechanism which arises from a nonminimal derivative coupling between the scalar field and the gravity. Assuming the nonminimal coupling parameter as a special function of the scalar field and considering the potential of natural inflation, we find three parameter sets that produce a period of ultra slow-roll inflation. This leads to sufficiently large enhancement in the curvature power spectra to form PBHs. We show that under the gravitationally enhanced friction mechanism, PBHs with a mass around ${\cal O}\big(10^{-12}\big)M_\odot$ can constitute around $96\%$ of the total DM and so this class of PBHs can be taken as a great candidate for DM. We further study the secondary Gravitational Waves (GWs) in our setting and show that our model predicts the peak of the present fractional energy density as $\Omega_{GW0} \sim 10^{-8}$ at different frequencies for all the three parameter sets. This value lies well inside the sensitivity region of some GWs detectors at some frequencies, and therefore the observational compatibility of our model can be appraised by the data from these detectors., Comment: 21 pages, 9 figures

In the present work, we study slow-roll inflation in scalar-tensor gravity theories in the presence of both the non-minimal coupling between the scalar field and curvature, and the Galileon self-interaction of the scalar field. Furthermore, we give predictions for the duration of reheating as well as for the reheating temperature after inflation. After working out the expressions for the power spectra of scalar and tensor perturbations in the case of a general non-minimal coupling function that depends solely on the scalar field and a general scalar potential, we focus on the special cases of the power-law coupling function and chaotic quadratic inflation. Thus, under the slow-roll approximation we confront the predictions of the model with the current PLANCK constraints on the spectral index $n_s$ and the tensor-to-scalar ratio $r$ using the $n_{s}-r$ plane. We found that the combination of the non-minimal coupling and Galileon self-interaction effects allows us to obtain better results for $r$ than in the case in which each effect is considered separately. Particularly, we obtained that the predictions of the model are in agreement with the current observational bounds on $n_{s}$ and $r$ within the $95 \%$ C.L region and also slightly inside the $68 \%$ C.L region. Also, we investigate the oscillatory regime after the end of inflation by solving the full background equations, and then we determine the upper bound for the Galileon and non-minimal coupling parameters under the condition that the scalar field oscillates coherently during reheating. Finally, after approximating reheating by a constant equation of state, we derive the relations between the reheating duration, the temperature at the end of reheating, its equation of state, and the number of $e$-folds of inflation and then we relate them all to the inflationary observables., 26 pages, 8 figures, 2 tables. Accepted version for publication in JCAP

Most of the inflationary scenarios that try to explain the origin of Primordial Black Holes (PBHs) from the enhancements of the power spectrum to values of order one, at the relevant scales, run into clashes with the Effective Field Theory (EFT) criteria or fail to enhance the power spectrum to such large amplitudes. In this paper, we unravel a mechanism for enhancing the power spectrum during inflation that does not use the flattening of the potential or reduction of the sound speed of scalar perturbations. The mechanism is based on this observation in the formalism of Extended EFT of inflation (EEFToI) with the sixth order polynomial dispersion relation for scalar perturbations that if the quartic coefficient in the dispersion relation is negative and smaller than a certain threshold, the amplitude of the power spectrum is enhanced substantially. The instability mechanism must arrange to kick in at the scales of interest related to the mass of the PBHs one would like to produce, which can be ten(s) of solar mass PBHs, suitable for LIGO events, or $10^{-17}-10^{-13}$ solar mass PBHs, which can comprise the whole dark matter energy density. We argue that the strong coupling is avoided for the range of parameters that the mechanisms enhance the power spectrum to the required amount., v1:1+18 pages, 5 figures; v2: 1+21 pages, 5 figures, matched the JHEP version