Inflationary perturbations are approximately Gaussian and deviations from Gaussianity are usually calculated using in-in perturbation theory. This method, however, fails for unlikely events on the tail of the probability distribution: in this regime non-Gaussianities are important and perturbation theory breaks down for $|ζ| \gtrsim |f_{\rm \scriptscriptstyle NL}|^{-1}$. In this paper we show that this regime is amenable to a semiclassical treatment, $\hbar \to 0$. In this limit the wavefunction of the Universe can be calculated in saddle-point, corresponding to a resummation of all the tree-level Witten diagrams. The saddle can be found by solving numerically the classical (Euclidean) non-linear equations of motion, with prescribed boundary conditions. We apply these ideas to a model with an inflaton self-interaction $\propto λ\dotζ^4$. Numerical and analytical methods show that the tail of the probability distribution of $ζ$ goes as $\exp(-λ^{-1/4}ζ^{3/2})$, with a clear non-perturbative dependence on the coupling. Our results are relevant for the calculation of the abundance of primordial black holes.
We review recent developments in the theory of inflation and cosmological perturbations produced from inflation. After a brief introduction of the standard, single-field slow-roll inflation, and the curvature and tensor perturbations produced from it, we discuss possible sources of nonlinear, non-Gaussian perturbations in other models of inflation. Then we describe the so-called $δN$ formalism, which is a powerful tool for evaluating nonlinear curvature perturbations on super Hubble scales.
We study cosmological perturbations and observational aspects for mutated hilltop model of inflation. Employing mostly analytical treatment, we evaluate observable parameters during inflation as well as post-inflationary perturbations. This further leads to exploring observational aspects related to Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation. This semi-analytical treatment reduces complications related to numerical computation to some extent for studying the different phenomena related to CMB angular power spectrum for mutated hilltop inflation.
Isocurvature perturbations naturally occur in models of inflation consisting of more than one scalar field. In this paper we calculate the spectrum of isocurvature perturbations generated at the end of inflation for three different inflationary models consisting of two canonical scalar fields. The amount of non-adiabatic pressure present at the end of inflation can have observational consequences through the generation of vorticity and subsequently the sourcing of B-mode polarisation. We compare two different definitions of isocurvature perturbations and show how these quantities evolve in dif…
We develop the gradient expansion formalism for shift-symmetric Galileon-type actions. We focus on backgrounds that undergo inflation, work in the synchronous gauge, and obtain a general solution up to second order without imposing extra conditions at first order. The solution simplifies during the late stages of inflation. We also define a curvature perturbation conserved up to first order.
The large-scale power deficit in the cosmic microwave background fluctuations might be relevant with the physics of pre-inflation, a bounce, or a superinflationary phase preceding slow-roll inflation, which can provide a singular-free realization of inflation. We investigate the primordial perturbations from such pre-inflationary evolutions, which generally may consist of multiple phases with different background dynamics, and give a universal formula for the power spectrum of primordial perturbations in terms of the recursive Bogoliubov coefficients. We also apply our formula to corresponding…
By making a suitable generalization of the Starobinsky stochastic inflation, we propose a classical phase space formulation of stochastic inflation which may be used for a quantitative study of decoherence of cosmological perturbations during inflation. The precise knowledge of how much cosmological perturbations have decohered is essential to the understanding of acoustic oscillations of cosmological microwave background (CMB) photons. In order to show how the method works, we provide the relevant equations for a self-interacting inflaton field. For pedagogical reasons and to provide a link t…
We analyze the behavior of linear perturbations in vector inflation. In contrast to the scalar field inflation, the linearized theory with vector fields contains couplings between scalar, vector and tensor modes. The perturbations decouple only in the ultraviolet limit, which allows us to carry out the canonical quantization. Superhorizon perturbations can be approximately analyzed due to suppressed mixing between different modes in the small fields models. We find that the vector perturbations of the metric decay exponentially, but the scalar and tensor modes could remain weakly coupled throu…
The effective field theory (EFT) of inflation provides a natural framework to study the new physical effects on primordial perturbations. Recently a healthy extension of the EFT of inflation with high-order operators has been proposed, which avoids ghosts and meanwhile leads to a nonlinear dispersion relation of the scalar perturbations. This paper is devoted to studying the effects of these high-order operators by using the uniform asymptotic approximation method. In particular, we first construct the approximate analytical solution to the mode function of the scalar perturbations. Because of…
We continue the analysis of perturbations in vector inflation. The dominant theme of this paper is the long wavelength limit of perturbations in small fields inflation and the controversial issue of its linear stability. We explain the nature of longitudinal modes, describe how they evolve, and show that they are not as harmful as it could seem at the first glance. On the other hand, the gravitational waves instability in large fields models is shown explicitly. It strongly limits a potential applicability of the recently proposed (delta N)-type approach to vector inflationary perturbations. F…
An inflationary universe scenario in the context of tachyon field is studied. This study is done from an ansantz for the effective potential of cosmological perturbations $U(η)$. We describe in great detail the analytical solutions of the scalar and tensor perturbations for two different ansantz in the effective potential of cosmological perturbations; the Easther's model and an effective potential similar to power law inflation. Also we find from the background equations that the effective tachyonic potential $V(φ)$, in both models satisfy the properties of a tachyonic potential. We consider …
This paper considers warm inflation as an interesting application of multi-field inflation. Delta-N formalism is used for the calculation of the evolution of the curvature perturbations during warm inflation. Although the perturbations considered in this paper are decaying after the horizon exit, the corrections to the curvature perturbations sourced by these perturbations can remain and dominate the curvature perturbations at large scales. In addition to the typical evolution of the curvature perturbations, inhomogeneous diffusion rate is considered for warm inflation, which may lead to signi…
In this paper we study the generation of primordial perturbations in a cosmological setting of bigravity during inflation. We consider a model of bigravity which can reproduce the $Λ$CDM background and large scale structure and a simple model of inflation with a single scalar field and a quadratic potential. Reheating is implemented with a toy-model in which the energy density of the inflaton is entirely dissipated into radiation. We present analytic and numerical results for the evolution of primordial perturbations in this cosmological setting. We find that the amplitude of tensor perturbati…
The purpose of these lectures is to give a pedagogical introduction to inflation and the production of primordial perturbations, as well as a review of some of the latest developments in this domain. After a short introduction, we review the main principles of the Hot Big Bang model, as well as its limitations. This motivates the study of cosmological inflation induced by a slow-rolling scalar field. We then turn to the analysis of cosmological perturbations, and explain how the vacuum quantum fluctuations are amplified during an inflationary phase. The next step consists in relating the pertu…
The recently proposed trans-Planckian censorship conjecture (TCC) seems to require that the energy scale of inflation is significantly lower than the Planck scale $(H_\text{inf}<10^{-20} \Mpl)$. This, in turn, implies that the tensor-to-scalar ratio for inflation is negligibly small, \textit{independent} of assumptions of slow-roll or even of having a single scalar field, thus ruling out inflation if primordial tensor modes are ever observed. After demonstrating the robustness and generality of these bounds, we show that having an excited initial state for cosmological perturbations seems to b…
We review the theory of inflationary perturbations. Perturbations at both linear and nonlinear orders are reviewed. We also review a variety of inflation models, emphasizing their signatures on cosmic perturbations.
Extending our previous work on the robustness of inflation to perturbations in the scalar field, we investigate the effects of perturbations in the transverse traceless part of the extrinsic curvature on the evolution of an inhomogeneous inflaton field. Focusing on small field models, we show that these additional metric inhomogeneities initially reduce the total number of e-folds as the amplitude increases, but that the reduction saturates and even reverses above a certain amplitude. We present an argument that this is due to the presence of a large initial Hubble friction when metric perturb…
We provide a concise review on multi-field inflation and cosmological perturbations. We discuss convenient and physically meaningful bases in terms of which perturbations can be systematically studied. We give formal accounts on the gauge fixing conditions and present the perturbation action in two gauges. We also briefly review non-linear perturbations.
Cosmological perturbations of massive higher-spin fields are generated during inflation, but they decay on scales larger than the Hubble radius as a consequence of the Higuchi bound. By introducing suitable couplings to the inflaton field, we show that one can obtain statistical correlators of massive higher-spin fields which remain constant or decay very slowly outside the Hubble radius. This opens up the possibility of new observational signatures from inflation.
We study the cosmological perturbations created during the New Higgs inflationary phase. In the New Higgs Inflation, the Higgs boson is kinetically coupled to the Einstein tensor and only three perturbative degrees of freedom, a scalar and two tensorial (gravitational waves), propagate during Inflation. Scalar perturbations are found to match the latest WMAP-7yrs data within Standard Model Higgs parameters. Primordial gravitational waves also, although propagating with superluminal speed, are consistent with present data. Finally, we estimate the values of the parameter of the New Higgs Inflat…
We propose a new approach for calculating the curvature perturbations produced during inflation in the stochastic formalism. In our formalism, the fluctuations of the e-foldings are directly calculated without perturbatively expanding the inflaton field and they are connected to the curvature perturbations by the $δN$ formalism. The result automatically includes the contributions of the higher order perturbations because we solve the equation of motion non-perturbatively. In this paper, we analytically prove that our result (the power spectrum and the nonlinearity parameter) is consistent with…
We compute the full bispectra, namely both auto- and cross- bispectra, of primordial curvature and tensor perturbations in the most general single-field inflation model whose scalar and gravitational equations of motion are of second order. The formulae in the limits of k-inflation and potential-driven inflation are also given. These expressions are useful for estimating the full bispectra of temperature and polarization anisotropies of the cosmic microwave background radiation.
We construct a warm inflation model with inflaton field non-minimally coupled to induced gravity on a warped DGP brane. We incorporate possible modification of the induced gravity on the brane in the spirit of $f(R)$-gravity. We study cosmological perturbations in this setup. In the case of two field inflation such as warm inflation, usually entropy perturbations are generated. While it is expected that in the case of one field inflation these perturbations to be removed, we show that even in the absence of the radiation field, entropy perturbations are generated in our setup due to non-minima…
A contribution $ζ_χ$ to the curvature perturbation will be generated during the waterfall that ends hybrid inflation, that may be significant on small scales. In particular, it may lead to excessive black hole formation. We here consider standard hybrid inflation, where the tachyonic mass of the waterfall field is much bigger than the Hubble parameter. We calculate $ζ_χ$ in the simplest case, and see why earlier calculations of $ζ_χ$ are incorrect.
We develop a technique to construct analytical solutions of the linear perturbations of inflation with a nonlinear dispersion relation, due to quantum effects of the early universe. Error bounds are given and studied in detail. The analytical solutions describe the exact evolution of the perturbations extremely well even when only the first-order approximations is used.
We investigate the parameter spaces of hybrid inflation model with special attention paid to the dynamics of waterfall field and curvature perturbations induced from its quantum fluctuations. Depending on the inflaton field value at the time of phase transition and the sharpness of the phase transition inflation can have multiple extended stages. We find that for models with mild phase transition the induced curvature perturbation from the waterfall field is too large to satisfy the COBE normalization. We investigate the model parameter space where the curvature perturbations from the waterfal…
We develop a theory of nonlinear cosmological perturbations on superhorizon scales for generic single-field inflation. Our inflaton is described by the Lagrangian of the form $W(X,ϕ)-G(X,ϕ)\Boxϕ$ with $X=-\partial^μϕ\partial_μϕ/2$, which is no longer equivalent to a perfect fluid. This model is more general than k-inflation, and is called G-inflation. A general nonlinear solution for the metric and the scalar field is obtained at second order in gradient expansion. We derive a simple master equation governing the large-scale evolution of the nonlinear curvature perturbation. It turns out that …
We study a scalar-tensor cosmological model where the Einstein tensor is non-minimally coupled to the free scalar field dynamics. Using FRW metric, we investigate the behavior of scale factor for vacuum, matter and dark energy dominated eras. Especially, we focus on the inflationary behavior at early universe. Moreover, we study the perturbation analysis of this model in order to confront the inflation under consideration with the observational results.
We investigate the implication of Trans-Planckian Censorship Conjecture (TCC) for the initial state of primordial perturbations. It is possible to set the state of perturbation modes in the infinite past as the Minkowski vacuum, only if the pre-inflationary era is past-complete. We calculate the evolution of the perturbation modes in such a pre-inflationary era and show that at the beginning of inflation the perturbation modes with wavelengths much shorter than the Hubble scale (but still larger than the Planck length scale) will behave as they are in the Bunch-Davis state. Therefore, a past-c…
In some versions of the theory of inflation, it is assumed that before inflation began the universe was in a Friedmann-Robertson-Walker (FRW) stage, with the energy density dominated by massless particles. The origin of the nearly scale-invariant density perturbations is quantum fluctuations in the inflaton field. Here we point out that under those conditions there would necessarily also be large thermally induced density perturbations. It is asserted that inflation would smooth out any pre-existing perturbations. But that argument relies on linear perturbation theory of the scalar modes, whic…
We study the scalar and tensor perturbations generated by the fragmentation of the inflaton condensate into oscillons or transients after inflation, using nonlinear classical lattice simulations. Without including the backreaction of metric perturbations, we find that the magnitude of scalar metric perturbations never exceeds a few $\times 10^{-3}$, whereas the maximal strength of the gravitational wave signal today is $\mathcal{O}(10^{-9})$ for standard post-inflationary expansion histories. We provide parameter scalings for the $α$-attractor models of inflation, which can be easily applied t…
Cosmological inflation generates a spectrum of density perturbations that can seed the cosmic structures we observe today. These perturbations are usually computed as the result of the gravitationally-induced spontaneous creation of perturbations from an initial vacuum state. In this paper, we compute the perturbations arising from gravitationally-induced stimulated creation when perturbations are already present in the initial state. The effect of these initial perturbations is not diluted by inflation and survives to its end, and beyond. We consider a generic statistical density operator $ρ$…
We reconsider magnetogenesis in the context of three-form inflation, and its backreaction. In particular, we focus on first order perturbation theory during inflation and subsequent radiation era: we discuss the consistency of the perturbative approach, and elaborate on the possible non-Gaussian signatures of the model.
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.
In this work, we revisit the perturbations that are generated in the bounce inflation scenario constructed within the framework of $f(T)$ theory. It has been well known that pure $f(T)$ theory cannot give rise to bounce inflation behavior, so aside from the gravity part, we also employ a canonical scalar field for minimal extension. We calculate the perturbations in $f(T)$ theory using the well-established ADM formalism, and find various conditions to avoid their pathologies. We find that it is indeed very difficult to obtain a healthy model without those pathologies, however, one may find a w…
Based on the stochastic gravity, we study the loop corrections to the scalar and tensor perturbations during inflation. Since the loop corrections to scalar perturbations suffer infrared (IR) divergence, we consider the IR regularization to obtain the finite value. We find that the loop corrections to the scalar perturbations are amplified by the e-folding; in other words there appear the logarithmic correction, just as discussed by M.Sloth et al. On the other hand, we find that the tensor perturbations do not suffer from infrared divergence.
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 …
Following our previous work in noncommutative braneworld inflation (arXiv:0911.4418), in this paper we use the smeared, coherent state picture of noncommutativity to study evolution of perturbations in a noncommutative braneworld scenario. We show that in this setup, the early stage of the universe evolution has a phantom evolution with imaginary effective sound speed. We show also that the amplitude of perturbations in the commutative regime decays faster than the noncommutative regime with the same parameter values, and as a result we need smaller number of e-folds in the noncommutative regi…
We study the inflation scenarios, in the framework of superstring theory, where the inflaton is an axion producing the adiabatic curvature perturbations while there exists another light axion producing the isocurvature perturbations. We discuss how the non-trivial couplings among string axions can generically arise, and calculate the consequent cross-correlations between the adiabatic and isocurvature modes through concrete examples. Based on the Planck analysis on the generally correlated isocurvature perturbations, we show that there is a preference for the existence of the correlated isocur…
The effect of the initial conditions in inflation on scalar and tensor perturbations is investigated. Formulae for the power spectra of gravitational waves and curvature perturbations for any initial conditions in inflation are derived, and the ratio of scalar to tensor perturbations and spectral index are calculated. The formulation is applied to some simplified pre-inflationary cosmological models, and the differences of the ratio and spectral index are investigated with respect to two matching conditions. In addition, the present power spectrum of gravitational waves is derived. The propose…
In this work we construct a model where the first order vector perturbations can be generated during inflationary expansion. For the non-standard spinors, known as ELKO, we show that the components of the first order perturbed energy-momentum tensor of the ELKO is non-zero for pure vector part of the metric perturbation ($B_{i}$). We show that vector perturbations do not decay in the super-Hubble scale and for a specific super-inflation background model we show that the vector perturbations are nearly scale invariant, while its amplitude is smaller than the primordial scalar perturbations. We …
We estimate large-scale curvature perturbations from isocurvature fluctuations in the waterfall field during hybrid inflation, in addition to the usual inflaton field perturbations. The tachyonic instability at the end of inflation leads to an explosive growth of super-Hubble scale perturbations, but they retain the steep blue spectrum characteristic of vacuum fluctuations in a massive field during inflation. The power spectrum thus peaks around the Hubble-horizon scale at the end of inflation. We extend the usual delta-N formalism to include the essential role of these small fluctuations when…
We consider k-inflation models where the action is a non-linear function of both the inflaton and the inflaton kinetic term. We focus on a scalar-tensor extension of k-inflation coupled to matter for which we derive a modified Mukhanov-Sasaki equation for the curvature perturbation. Significant corrections to the power spectrum appear when the coupling function changes abruptly along the inflationary trajectory. This gives rise to a modification of Starobinsky's model of perturbation features. We analyse the way the power spectrum is altered in the infrared when such features are present.
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.
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, …
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 perturbations and gravitational waves. We show that constraints on the duration of inflation together with the BICEP3/Keck bounds on the gravitational wave background imply that higher derivatives of the potential are nontrivial with a confidence of 99%. Such terms contribute to the scale-dependence, or running, of the density perturbation spectrum. We clarify the…
The BICEP2 experiment determined the Hubble parameter during inflation to be about $10^{14}$ GeV. Such high inflation scale is in tension with the QCD axion dark matter if the Peccei-Quinn (PQ) symmetry remains broken during and after inflation, because too large axion isocurvature perturbations would be generated. The axion isocurvature perturbations can be suppressed if the axion acquires a sufficiently heavy mass during inflation. We show that this is realized if the PQ symmetry is explicitly broken down to a discrete symmetry and if the breaking is enhanced during inflation. We also show t…
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 extend the theory of cosmological perturbations to the case when the ``matter'' Lagrangian is an arbitrary function of the scalar field and its first derivatives. In particular, this extension provides a unified description of known cases such as the usual scalar field and the hydrodynamical perfect fluid. In addition, it applies to the recently proposed k-inflation, which is driven by non-minimal kinetic terms in the Lagrangian. The spectrum of quantum fluctuations for slow-roll and power law k-inflation is calculated. We find, for instance, that the usual ``consistency relation'' between …
In this paper the possibility of generating large scale curvature perturbations induced from the entropic perturbations during the waterfall phase transition of standard hybrid inflation model is studied. We show that whether or not appreciable amounts of large scale curvature perturbations are produced during the waterfall phase transition depend crucially on the competition between the classical and the quantum mechanical back-reactions to terminate inflation. If one considers only the classical evolution of the system we show that the highly blue-tilted entropy perturbations induce highly b…
At energies higher than the brane tension, the dynamics of a scalar field rolling down a potential are modified relative to the predictions of General Relativity. The modifications imply, among other things, that steeper potentials can be used to drive an epoch of slow--roll inflation. We investigate the evolution of entropy and adiabatic modes during inflation driven by two scalar fields confined on the brane. We show that the amount of entropy perturbations produced during inflation is suppressed compared to the predictions made by General Relativity. As a consequence, the initial conditions…
It has been pointed out that the perturbation spectrum predicted by inflation may be sensitive to a natural ultraviolet cutoff, thus potentially providing an experimentally accessible window to aspects of Planck scale physics. A priori, a natural ultraviolet cutoff could take any form, but a fairly general classification of possible Planck scale cutoffs has been given. One of those categorized cutoffs, also appearing in various studies of quantum gravity and string theory, has recently been implemented into the standard inflationary scenario. Here, we continue this approach by investigating it…
We study the fourth order action of the comoving curvature perturbation in an inflationary universe in order to understand more systematically the de Sitter limit in nonlinear cosmological perturbation theory. We derive the action of the curvature perturbation to fourth order in the comoving gauge, and show that it vanishes sufficiently fast in the de Sitter limit. By studying the de Sitter limit, we then extrapolate to the n'th order action of the comoving curvature perturbation and discuss the slow-roll order of the n-point correlation function.
We propose a simple realization of hybrid inflation in supergravity, which does not require any unnaturally small parameters. Inflation in this scenario is relatively short, and inflationary density perturbations fall down on large scales, which corresponds to a blue spectrum with n > 1. Superheavy strings which are formed after inflation in this scenario produce density perturbations of comparable magnitude. In this mixed perturbation (MP) model one may have microwave anisotropy produced by strings and galaxy formation due to inflationary perturbations.
We explore a new possibility that some inflaton fields in multi-field inflation models satisfy the observed value of the spectral index so that the curvature perturbation generated by them through post-inflationary dynamics may be relevant for the current observations. We illustrate this point using a simple and reasonable multi-field chaotic inflation model motivated from string theory. Possible non-Gaussianity and the tensor-to-scalar ratio are briefly addressed.
In the present paper, we study the non-Gaussianity of multiple-field inflation model using the method of the field equation. We start from reviewing the background and the perturbation theory of multiple-field inflation, and then derive the Klein-Gorden equation for the perturbations at second order. Afterward, we calculate the tree-level bispectrum of the fields' perturbations and finally give the corresponding parameter $f_{NL}$ for the curvature perturbation $ζ$ in virtue of the $δN$ formalism. We also compare our result with the one already obtained from the Lagrangian formalism, and find …
We observe that when a local patch in a radiation filled Robertson-Walker universe inflates by some reason, outside perturbations can enter into the inflating region. Generally, the physical wavelengths of these perturbations become larger than the Hubble radius as they cross into the inflating space and their amplitudes freeze out immediately. It turns out that the corresponding power spectrum is not scale invariant. Although these perturbations cannot reach out to a distance inner observer shielded by a de Sitter horizon, they still indicate a curious boundary effect in local inflationary sc…
