We briefly review the standard derivation of the spectra of cosmological perturbations in the simplest models of inflation. We then consider models with several scalar fields, described by Lagrangians with an arbitrary dependence on the kinetic terms. We illustrate our general formalism with the case of multi-field DBI inflation.
After a brief summary of general relativity and cosmology, we present the basic concepts underlying inflation, the currently best motivated models for the early Universe. We describe the simplest inflation models, based on a single scalar field, and discuss how primordial cosmological perturbations are generated. We then review some recent developments concerning multi-field inflation models, in particular multi-field Dirac-Born-Infeld inflation.
A new idea of deriving a cosmological term from an underlying theory has been proposed in order to explain the expansion history of the universe. We obtain the scale factor with this derived cosmological term and demonstrate that it reflects all the characteristics of the expanding universe in different era so as to result in a transition from inflation to late acceleration through intermediate decelerating phases by this single entity. We further discuss certain observational aspects of this paradigm.
We study the renormalized energy-momentum tensor (EMT) of cosmological scalar fluctuations during the slow-rollover regime for chaotic inflation with a quadratic potential and find that it is characterized by a negative energy density which grows during slow-rollover. We also approach the back-reaction problem as a second-order calculation in perturbation theory finding no evidence that the back-reaction of cosmological fluctuations is a gauge artifact. In agreement with the results on the EMT, the average expansion rate is decreased by the back-reaction of cosmological fluctuations.
We study cosmological perturbations in two-field inflation, allowing for non-standard kinetic terms. We calculate analytically the spectra of curvature and isocurvature modes at Hubble crossing, up to first order in the slow-roll parameters. We also compute numerically the evolution of the curvature and isocurvature modes from well within the Hubble radius until the end of inflation. We show explicitly for a few examples, including the recently proposed model of `roulette' inflation, how isocurvature perturbations affect significantly the curvature perturbation between Hubble crossing and the …
These lectures are intended to give a pedagogical introduction to the main current picture of the very early universe. After elementary reviews of general relativity and of the standard Big Bang model, the following subjects are discussed: inflation, the classical relativistic theory of cosmological perturbations and the generation of perturbations from scalar field quantum fluctuations during inflation.
We study the renormalized energy-momentum tensor of cosmological scalar fluctuations during the slow-rollover regime for power-law inflation and find that it is characterized by a negative energy density at the leading order, with the same time behaviour as the background energy. The average expansion rate appears decreased by the back-reaction of the effective energy of cosmological fluctuations, but this value is comparable with the energy of background only if inflation starts at a Planckian energy. We also find that, for this particular model, the first and second order inflaton fluctuatio…
A quantum field theory warm inflation model is presented that solves the horizon/flatness problems. The model obtains, from the elementary dynamics of particle physics, cosmological scale factor trajectories that begin in a radiation dominated regime, enter an inflationary regime and then smoothly exit back into a radiation dominated regime, with nonnegligible radiation throughout the evolution.
We suggest that the cosmological constant has been relaxed to its present, very small value during the inflationary stage of the evolution of the Universe. This requires relatively low scale, very long duration and unconventional source of inflation. We present a concrete mechanism of the cosmological constant relaxation at the inflationary epoch.
Curvature perturbations generated after the end of inflation are estimated for a generic multi-field inflationary potential. The curvature perturbations are generated by conversion of inflationary isocurvature perturbations, similar to curvaton and inhomogeneous reheating scenarios. During inflation, the trajectory along which the fields are rolling down will fluctuate. When inflation ends, the fields enter the oscillatory phase along different directions in different parts of the universe. Different oscillatory trajectories can have different effective equations of state and reheating rates, …
The phase-integral approximation devised by Fröman and Fröman, is used for computing cosmological perturbations in the power-law inflationary model. The phase-integral formulas for the scalar and tensor power spectra are explicitly obtained up to ninth-order of the phase-integral approximation. We show that, the phase-integral approximation exactly reproduces the shape of the power spectra for scalar and tensor perturbations as well as the spectral indices. We compare the accuracy of the phase-integral approximation with the results for the power spectrum obtained with the slow-roll and unifor…
We compute the spectrum of cosmological perturbations in a scenario in which inflation is driven by radiation in a non-commutative space-time. In this scenario, the non-commutativity of space and time leads to a modified dispersion relation for radiation with two branches, which allows for inflation. The initial conditions for the cosmological fluctuations are thermal. This is to be contrasted with the situation in models of inflation in which the accelerated expansion of space is driven by the potential energy of a scalar field, and in which the fluctuations are of quantum vacuum type. We fin…
In the framework of Inflationary theory, the assumption that the quantum state of the perturbations is a non-vacuum state leads to a difficulty: non-vacuum initial states imply, in general, a large energy density of inflaton field quanta, not of a cosmological term type, that could prevent the inflationary phase. In this short note, we discuss in detail why this is so, keeping an eye on possible non-Gaussian features due to considering generic non-vacuum initial states.
Formulae are derived for the spectra of scalar curvature perturbations and gravitational waves produced during inflation, special cases of which include power law inflation, natural inflation in the small angle approximation and inflation in the slow roll approximation.
We propose a paradigm for the inflation and the vanishing cosmological constant in a unified way with the self-tuning solutions of the cosmological constant problem. Here, we consider a time-varying cosmological constant in self-tuning models of the cosmological constant. As a specific example, we demonstrate it with a 3-form field in 5D.
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 fluctuations during the inflationary era become macroscopic density fluctuations which leave distinct imprints in the cosmic microwave background (CMB). We describe the physics of anisotropies in the CMB temperature and polarization and discuss how CMB observations can be used to probe the primordial universe.
Cosmological inflation is studied in the case where the inflaton is the overall modulus $T$ for an orbifold. General forms of the (non-perturbative) superpotential are considered to ensure that $G=K+{\rm ln}|W|^2$ is modular invariant. We find generically that these models do not produce a potential flat enough for slow roll to a supersymmetric minimum, although we do find a model which produces up to 20 e-folds of inflation to a non-supersymmetric minimum.
This review article aims at presenting the theory of inflation. We first describe the background spacetime behavior during the slow-roll phase and analyze how inflation ends and the Universe reheats. Then, we present the theory of cosmological perturbations with special emphasis on their behavior during inflation. In particular, we discuss the quantum-mechanical nature of the fluctuations and show how the uncertainty principle fixes the amplitude of the perturbations. In a next step, we calculate the inflationary power spectra in the slow-roll approximation and compare these theoretical predic…
From a general ansatz for the effective potential of cosmological perturbations we find new, exact solutions in single-scalar-field inflation: a three parameter family of exact inflationary solutions that encompasses all exact solutions that have been known previously (power-law inflation, Easther's model, and a generalised version of Starobinsky's solution). The main feature of this new family is that the spectral indices are scale dependent.
The cosmological constant problem is how one chooses, without fine-tuning, one singular point $Λ_{eff}=0$ for the 4D cosmological constant. We argue that some recently discovered {\it weak self-tuning} solutions can be viewed as blowing-up this one point into a band of some parameter. These weak self-tuning solutions may have a virtue that only de Sitter space solutions are allowed outside this band, allowing an inflationary period. We adopt the hybrid inflation at the brane to exit from this inflationary phase and to enter into the standard Big Bang cosmology.
We investigate the cosmological perturbation of two-scalar field model during the reheating phase after inflation. Using the exact solution of the perturbation in long-wavelength limit, which is expressed in terms of the background quantities, we analyze the behavior of the metric perturbation. The oscillating inflaton field gives rise to the parametric resonance of the massless scalar field and this leads to the amplification of the iso-curvature mode of the metric perturbations.
Dynamics of long-wave isocurvature perturbations during an inflationary stage in multiple (multi-component) inflationary models is calculated analytically for the case where scalar fields producing this stage interact between themselves through gravity only. This enables to determine correct amplitudes of such perturbations produced by vacuum quantum fluctuations of the scalar fields during the multiple inflationary stage. Exact matching to a post-inflationary evolution that gives the amplitude of isocurvature perturbations in the cold dark matter model with radiation is performed in the case …
We calculate power spectra of cosmological perturbations at high accuracy for two classes of inflation models. We classify the models according to the behaviour of the Hubble distance during inflation. Our approximation works if the Hubble distance can be approximated either to be a constant or to grow linearly with cosmic time. Many popular inflationary models can be described in this way, e.g., chaotic inflation with a monomial potential, power-law inflation and inflation at a maximum. Our scheme of approximation does not rely on a slow-roll expansion. Thus we can make accurate predictions f…
The motivation for studying the rolling tachyon and non-commutative inflation comes from string theory. In the tachyon inflation scenario, metric perturbations are created by tachyon field fluctuations during inflation. We drive the exact mode equation for scalar perturbation of the metric and investigate the cosmological perturbations in the commutative and non-commutative inflationary spacetime driven by the tachyon field which have a Born-Infeld Lagrangian.
An anthropic understanding of the cosmological constant requires that the vacuum energy at late time scans from one patch of the universe to another. If the vacuum energy during inflation also scans, the various patches of the universe acquire exponentially differing volumes. In a generic landscape with slow-roll inflation, we find that this gives a steeply varying probability distribution for the normalization of the primordial density perturbations, resulting in an exponentially small fraction of observers measuring the COBE value of 10^-5. Inflationary landscapes should avoid this "σproblem…
We investigate how the uncertainty of noncommutative spacetime could explain the WMAP data. For this purpose, the spectrum is divided into the IR and UV region. We introduce a noncommutative parameter of $γ_0$ in the IR region and a noncommutative parameter of $μ_0$ in the UV region. We calculate cosmological parameters using the slow-roll expansion in the UV region and a perturbation method in the IR region. The power-law inflation is chosen to obtain explicit forms for the power spectrum, spectral index, and running spectral index. Further, these are used to fit the data.
We present a new, exact scalar field cosmology for which the spectrum of scalar (density) perturbations can be calculated exactly. We use this exact result to the probe the accuracy of approximate calculations of the perturbation spectrum.
Recent experimental determinations of the spectral index describing the scalar mode spectrum of density perturbations encourage comparison with predictions from models of the very early universe. Unlike extended inflation, Induced-gravity Inflation predicts a power spectrum with $0.98 \leq n_s \leq 1.00$, in close agreement with the experimental measurements.
We find exact exponentially expanding and contracting de Sitter solutions of the spatially homogeneous TeVeS cosmological equations of motion in the vacuum TeVeS model and a power law accelerated expanding solution in thepresence of an additional ideal fluid with equation of state parameter $-5/3 < ω< -1$. A preliminary stability analysis shows that the expanding vacuum solution is stable, while in the ideal fluid case stability depends on model parameter values. These solutions might provide a basis for incorporating early-time inflation or late-time accelerated expansion in TeVeS cosmology.
Cosmological inflation provides the simplest and most promising mechanism for generating fluctuations for structure formation. Using powerful Hamilton-Jacobi methods, I will describe (1) how to compute density fluctuations and cosmic microwave anisotropies arising from inflation, and (2) improvements of the Zel'dovich approximation describing gravitational collapse. I compare these results with the latest cosmological observations.
We develop a general formalism for analyzing linear perturbations in multiple-field cosmological inflation based on the gauge-ready approach. Our inflationary model consists of an arbitrary number of scalar fields with non-minimal kinetic terms. We solve the equations for scalar- and tensor-type perturbations during inflation to the first order in slow-roll, and then obtain the super-horizon solutions for adiabatic and isocurvature perturbations after inflation. Analytic expressions for power-spectra and spectral indices arising from multiple-field inflation are presented.
Scalar and tensorial cosmological perturbations generated in warm inflationary scenarios whose matter-radiation fluid is endowed with a viscous pressure are considered. Recent observational data from the WMAP experiment are employed to restrict the parameters of the model. Although the effect of this pressure on the matter power spectrum is of the order of a few percent, it may be detected in future experiments.
It is shown that non-adiabatic cosmological perturbations cannot arise during the period of reheating following inflation with a single scalar inflaton field.
There are many inflationary models in which inflaton field does not satisfy the slow-roll condition. However, in such models, it is always difficult to generate the curvature perturbation during inflation. Thus, to generate the curvature perturbation, one must introduce another component to the theory. To cite a case, curvatons may generate dominant part of the curvature perturbation after inflation. However, we have a question whether it is unrealistic to consider the generation of the curvature perturbation during inflation without slow-roll. Assuming multi-field inflation, we encounter the …
The dominant contribution to the primordial curvature perturbation may be generated at the end of inflation. Taking the end of inflation to be sudden, formulas are presented for the spectrum, spectral tilt and non-gaussianity. They are evaluated for a minimal extension of the original hybrid inflation model.
It is commonly believed that our Universe has experienced two different stages of accelerated expansion. The early stage is known as inflation and the current acceleration is driven by dark energy. Observing inflation and dark energy dynamics are among the most important aspects of the current cosmological research. In this paper we make a first detailed probe of possible degeneracies between dynamical inflation and dark energy in light of current cosmological observations. We find the inclusion of inflation and dark energy parameters together make the parameter spaces broader, but interesting…
We have investigated the generality of inflation (the probability of inflation in other words) in closed FRW models for a wide class of quintessence potentials. It is shown that inflation is not suppressed for most of them and for a wide enough range of their parameters. It allows us to decide inflation is common enough even in the case of closed Universe.
We present a new approximation scheme that allows us to increase the accuracy of analytical predictions of the power spectra of inflationary perturbations for two specific classes of inflationary models. Among these models are chaotic inflation with a monomial potential, power-law inflation and natural inflation (inflation at a maximum). After reviewing the established first order results we calculate the amplitudes and spectral indices for these classes of models at higher orders in the slow-roll parameters for scalar and tensorial perturbations.
The dependence of cosmological and inflationary parameters on time during the last 60 e-folds in inflation is investigated using a slow-roll inflation model. The time dependence of the inflaton field is calculated for the case of chaotic inflation by a numerical method rather than the familiar approximations. It is found that the Hubble parameter and the spectral index decrease in the last 60 e-folds. The dependence of the power spectrum of the curvature perturbation on the size perturbation k is calculated numerically, and it is shown that the overall constant value of the power spectrum thus…
The hypothesis that the Universe underwent a period of exponential expansion at very early times has become the most popular theory of the early Universe. Not only does it solve some of the problems of standard big bang cosmology, but it also provides a causal theory for the origin of primordial density fluctuations which may explain the observed density inhomogeneities and cosmic microwave fluctuations in the Universe. In these lectures, a review of the basic principles of inflationary cosmology is given, focusing on the theory of the origin and growth of cosmological perturbations. The lectu…
The inflationary potential and its derivatives determine the spectrum of scalar and tensor metric perturbations that arise from quantum fluctuations during inflation. The CBR anisotropy offers a promising means of determining the spectra of metric perturbations and thereby a means of constraining the inflationary potential. The relation between the metric perturbations and CBR anisotropy depends upon cosmological parameters -- most notably the possibility of a cosmological constant. Motivated by some observational evidence for a cosmological constant (large-scale structure, cluster-baryon frac…
The standard calculation of the spectrum of density perturbations produced during inflation assumes that there is only one real dynamical degree of freedom during inflation. However, there is no reason to believe that this is actually the case. In this paper we derive general analytic formulae for the spectrum and spectral index of the density perturbations produced during inflation.
We study the possibility of canceling the cosmological constant in supergravity string models. We show that with a suitable choice of superpotential the vacuum energy may vanish with the dilaton field at its minimum and supersymmetry broken with a large hierarchy. We derive the condition for which the introduction of a chiral potential, e.g. the inflaton potential, does not destabilize the dilaton field even in the region where the scalar potential takes positive values. This allows for an inflationary potential with the dilaton frozen at its minimum.
Using the nonlinear $δN$ formalism, we consider a simple exactly soluble model of multi-component slow-roll inflation in which the nonlinear curvature perturbation can be evaluated analytically.
We present a study of open inflation cosmological scenarios in which cosmic strings form betwen the two inflationary epochs. It is shown that in these models strings are stretched outside the horizon due to the inflationary expansion but must necessarily re-enter the horizon before the epoch of equal matter and radiation densities. We determine the power spectrum of cold dark matter perturbations in these hybrid models, finding good agreement with observations for values of $Γ=Ω_0h\sim0.3$ and comparable contributions from the active and passive sources to the CMB. Finally, we briefly discuss …
We investigate the phenomenology of warm inflation and present generic results about the evolution of the inflaton and radiation fields. The general conditions required for warm inflation to take place are derived and discussed. A comprehensive approach is presented for the generation of thermally induced adiabatic and isocurvature perturbations and the amplitude of their spectra calculated. In addition we derive the ratio of tensor-to-scalar perturbations and find the spectral indices for adiabatic, isocurvature and tensor perturbations formed in the warm inflationary era. These results are p…
We investigate cosmological moduli problem in the gauge-mediated supersymmetry breaking (GMSB). A mini-inflation (oscillating inflation) takes place when a scalar field corresponding to the flat direction in GMSB oscillates along the logarithmic potential induced by the gauge-mediation mechanism. It is shown that this oscillating inflation can sufficiently dilute the relic abundance of the string moduli for some ranges of parameters in the GMSB models.
We study the out of equilibrium dynamics of inflationary phase transitions and compute the resulting spectrum of metric perturbations relevant to observation. We show that simple single field models of inflation may produce an adiabatic perturbation spectrum with a blue spectral tilt and that the precise spectrum depends on initial conditions at the outset of inflation.
We show that if the primordial classical perturbations were generated by the gravitational particle creation during inflation, and followed by an evolution of quantum-to-classical transition,the time dependent correlation of these perturbations is long-tailed with a correlation time larger than the Hubble-time. Consequently, the inflationary perturbations are locally scale-scale correlated. Hence, the interaction of the fields during inflation can be explored via the detection of the local scale-scale correlation of the CMB fluctuations.
In this paper we study the inflation model driven by the phantom field. We propose a possible exit from phantom inflation to our observational cosmology by introducing an additional normal scalar field, similar to hybrid inflation model. Then we discuss the primordial perturbation spectra from various phantom inflation models and give an interesting compare with those of normal scalar field inflation models.
In this paper we provide approximate analytical analysis of stability of nonsingular inflationary chaotic-type cosmological models. Initial conditions for nonsingular solutions at the bounce correspond to dominance of potential part of the energy density of the scalar field over its kinetic part both within general relativity and gauge theories of gravity. Moreover, scalar field at the bounce exceeds the planckian value and on expansion stage these models correspond to chaotic inflation. Such solutions can be well approximated by explicitly solvable model with constant effective potential (cos…
We study the behaviour of inflationary density perturbations in the vicinity of horizon crossing, using numerical evolution of the relevant mode equations. We explore two specific scenarios. In one, inflation is temporarily ended because a portion of the potential is too steep to support inflation. We find that perturbations on super-horizon scales can be modified, usually leading to a large amplification, because of entropy perturbations in the scalar field. This leads to a broad feature in the power spectrum, and the slow-roll and Stewart--Lyth approximations, which assume the perturbations …
We consider a two-field hybrid inflation model, in which the curvature perturbation is predominantly generated at the end of inflation. By finely tuning the coupling of the fields to the waterfall we find that we can get a measurable amount of non-gaussianity.
We describe the universe as a local, inhomogeneous spherical bubble embedded in a flat matter dominated FLRW universe. Generalized exact Friedmann equations describe the expansion of the universe and an early universe inflationary de Sitter solution is obtained. A non-perturbative expression for the deceleration parameter q is derived that can possibly describe the acceleration of the universe without dark energy, due to the effects associated with very long wave length super-horizon inflationary perturbations. The suggestion by Kolbe et al. [9] that long wave length super-horizon inflationary…
We consider the spectrum of primordial fluctuations produced by inflationary models where the inflaton potential is the sum of two exponential terms. A wide range of spectra result, with the only constraint being that the scalar spectrum must have more tilt than the tensor spectrum. This model can mimic the spectra of most inflationary models, as well as producing combinations of scalar and tensor perturbations not found in common varieties of slow-rolling inflation.
Many models of supersymmetry breaking involve particles with weak scale mass and Planck mass suppressed couplings. Coherent production of such particles in the early universe destroys the successful predictions of nucleosynthesis. We show that this problem may be solved by a brief period of weak scale inflation. Furthermore the inflaton potential for such an inflation naturally arises from the same assumptions which lead to the cosmological problem. Successful baryogenesis and preservation of density fluctuations for large scale structure formation are also possible in this scenario.
We analyze cosmological perturbations to the linear order in the context of inflation with an arbitrary number of scalar fields. The fields take values on a non-trivial manifold with a positive-definite metric and are non-minimally coupled to Einstein gravity. The perturbations are decomposed into three different types. The scalar-type perturbations are presented in a gauge-ready form without fixing the temporal gauge condition, as well as in terms of gauge-invariant variables. The gauge-ready method enables us to impose different gauge conditions which are most suitable to the problem at hand…
Vacuum fluctuations in the inflaton field driving chaotic inflation with a quadratic potential give a red spectrum of primordial density perturbations, n=0.97. However angular fluctuations in an O(N)-symmetric quadratic potential have a very nearly scale-invariant spectrum, n=0.9998. We investigate the possibility that these isocurvature field perturbations could give the dominant contribution to the primordial density perturbation after inflation.
In addition to generating the appropriate perturbation power spectrum, an inflationary scenario must take into account the need for inflation to end subsequently. In the context of single-field inflation models where inflation ends by breaking of the slow-roll condition, we constrain the first and second derivatives of the inflaton potential using this additional requirement. We compare this with current observational constraints from the primordial spectrum and discuss several issues relating to our results.
We make a detailed calculation of the amplitude of isocurvature perturbations arising from inflationary models in which the cold dark matter is represented by a scalar field which acquires perturbations during inflation. We use this to compute the normalization to large-angle microwave background anisotropies. Unlike the case of adiabatic perturbations, the normalization to COBE fixes the spectral index of the perturbations; if adiabatic perturbations are negligible then $n_{iso} \simeq 0.4$. Such blue spectra are also favoured by other observational data. Although the pure isocurvature models…
An introductory account is given of the inflationary cosmology, which postulates a period of accelerated expansion during the Universe's earliest stages. The historical motivation is briefly outlined, and the modelling of the inflationary epoch explained. The most important aspect of inflation is that it provides a possible model for the origin of structure in the Universe, and key results are reviewed, along with a discussion of the current observational situation and outlook.