We study the possibility of cogenesis of baryon and dark matter (DM) from the out-of-equilibrium CP violating decay of right handed neutrino (RHN) that are dominantly of non-thermal origin. While the RHN and its heavier partners can take part in light neutrino mass generation via Type-I seesaw mechanism, the decay of RHN into dark and visible sectors can create respective asymmetries simultaneously. The non-thermal sources of RHN considered are {\bf (a)} on-shell decay of inflaton, and {\bf (b)} evaporation of ultralight primordial black holes (PBH). After setting up the complete set of Boltzmann equations in both these scenarios, we constrain the resulting parameter space of the particle physics setup, along with inflaton and PBH sectors from the requirement of generating correct (asymmetric) DM abundance and baryon asymmetry, while being in agreement with other relevant cosmological bounds. Scenario {\bf (a)} links the common origin of DM and baryon asymmetry to post-inflationary reheating via RHNs produced in inflaton decay, whereas in scenario {\bf (b)} we find enhancement of baryon and DM abundance, compared to the purely thermal scenarios, in presence of PBH with appropriate mass and initial fraction. Although the minimal setup itself is very predictive with observational consequences, details of the UV completion of the dark sector can offer several complementary probes.
We propose a variant scenario of spontaneous baryogenesis from asymmetric inflaton based on current-current interactions between the inflaton and matter fields with a non-zero B-L charge. When the inflaton starts to oscillate around the minimum after inflation, it may lead to excitation of a CP-odd component, which induces an effective chemical potential for the B-L number through the current-current interactions. We study concrete inflation models and show that the spontaneous baryogenesis scenario can be naturally implemented in the chaotic inflation in supergravity.
We study production of primordial black holes (PBHs) during an early matter-dominated phase. As a source of perturbations, we consider either the inflaton field with a running spectral index or a spectator field that has a blue spectrum and thus provides a significant contribution to the PBH production at small scales. First, we identify the region of the parameter space where a significant fraction of the observed dark matter can be produced, taking into account all current PBH constraints. Then, we present constraints on the amplitude and spectral index of the spectator field as a function o…
We show that fragmentation of the inflaton into long-lived spatially localized oscillon configurations can lead to copious production of black holes. In a single-field inflation model primordial black holes of sublunar mass can form, and they can account for all of the dark matter. We also explore the possibility that solar-mass primordial black holes, particularly relevant for gravitational wave astronomy, are produced from the same mechanism.
We study sound speed resonance (SSR) mechanism for primordial black hole (PBH) formation in an early universe scenario with inflaton and curvaton being mixed. In this scenario, the total primordial density perturbations can be contributed by the fluctuations from both the inflaton and curvaton fields, in which the inflaton fluctuations lead to the standard adiabatic perturbations, while the sound speed of the curvaton fluctuations are assumed to be oscillating during inflation. Due to the narrow resonance effect of SSR mechanism, we acquire the enhanced primordial density perturbations on smal…
We analyze quantum corrections on the naive $ϕ^4$-Inflation. These typically lead to an inflaton potential which carries a non-integer power of the field. We consider both minimal and non-minimal couplings to gravity. For the latter case we also study unitarity of inflaton-inflaton scattering. Finally we confront these theories with the Planck and BICEP2 data. We demonstrate that the discovery of primordial tensor modes by BICEP2 require the presence of sizable quantum departures from the $ϕ^4$-Inflaton model for the non-minimally coupled scenario which we parametrize and quantify. We compare …
We develop a stochastic approach to study scalar field fluctuations of the inflaton field in an early inflationary universe with a black-hole (BH), which is described by an effective 4D SdS metric. Considering a 5D Ricci-flat SdS static metric, we implement a planar coordinate transformation, in order to obtain a 5D cosmological metric, from which the effective 4D SdS metric can be induced on a 4D hypersurface. We found that at the end of inflation, the squared fluctuations of the inflaton field are not exactly scale independent and becomes sensitive with the mass of the BH.
Measurements of the distances to SNe Ia have produced strong evidence that the Universe is really accelarating, implying the existence of a nearly uniform component of dark energy with the simplest explanation as a cosmological constant. In this paper a small changing cosmological term is proposed, which is a function of a slow-rolling scalar field, by which the de Sitter primordial black holes' properties, for both charged and uncharged cases, are carefully examined and the relationship between the black hole formation and the energy transfer of the inflaton within this cosmological term is e…
Primordial Black Holes (PBHs) have entered the forefront of theoretical cosmology, due their potential role in phenomena ranging from gravitational waves, to dark matter, to galaxy formation. While producing PBHs from inflationary fluctuations naively would seem to require a large deceleration of the inflaton from its velocity at the horizon exit of CMB scales, in this work we demonstrate that an acceleration from a relatively small downward step in the potential that is transited in much less than an e-fold amplifies fluctuations as well. Depending on the location of the step, such PBHs could…
The running of the Higgs self coupling may lead to numerous phenomena in early universe cosmology. In this paper we introduce a scenario where the Higgs running induces turns in the trajectory passing a region with tachyonic mass, leading to a temporal tachyonic growth in the curvature power spectrum. This effect induced by the Higgs leaves phenomena in the form of primordial black holes and stochastic gravitational waves, where proposed GW observatories will be able to probe in the near future.
We report a novel prediction from single-field inflation that even a tiny step in the inflaton potential can change our perception of primordial non-Gaussianities of the curvature perturbation. Our analysis focuses on the tail of probability distribution generated by an upward step transition between two stages of slow-roll evolution. The nontrivial background dynamics with off-attractor behavior is identified. By using a non-perturbative $δN$ analysis, we explicitly show that a highly non-Gaussian tail can be generated by a tiny upward step, even when the conventional nonlinearity parameters …
I discuss a mechanism that renders the spectral index of the primordial spectrum and the inflationary stage independent of each other. If a scalar field acquires an appropriate time-dependent mass, it is possible to generate an adiabatic, Gaussian scale invariant spectrum of density perturbations during any stage of inflation. As an illustration, I present a simple model where the time-dependent mass arises from the coupling of the inflaton to a second scalar. The mechanism I propose might help to implement a successful inflationary scenario in particle physics theories that do not yield slow-…
The next generation of cosmic microwave background, gravitational wave, and large scale structure, experiments will provide an unprecedented opportunity to probe the primordial power spectrum on small scales. An exciting possibility for what lurks on small scales is a sharp rise in the primordial power spectrum: This can lead to the formation of primordial black holes, providing a dark matter candidate or the black holes observed by the LIGO-Virgo collaboration. In this work we develop a mechanism for the amplification of the small-scale primordial power spectrum, in the context of single-fiel…
We revisit the question whether the running-mass inflation model allows the formation of Primordial Black Holes (PBHs) that are sufficiently long-lived to serve as candidates for Dark Matter. We incorporate recent cosmological data, including the WMAP 7-year results. Moreover, we include "the running of the running" of the spectral index of the power spectrum, as well as the renormalization group "running of the running" of the inflaton mass term. Our analysis indicates that formation of sufficiently heavy, and hence long-lived, PBHs still remains possible in this scenario. As a by-product, we…
We study the effects of the Higgs directly coupled to the inflaton on the primordial power spectrum. The quadratic coupling between the Higgs and the inflaton stabilizes the Higgs in the electroweak vacuum during inflation by inducing a large effective mass for the Higgs, which also leads to oscillatory features in the primordial power spectrum due to the oscillating classical background. Meanwhile, the features from quantum fluctuations exhibit simple monotonic k-dependence and are subleading compared to the classical contributions. We also comment on the collider searches.
We study the formation of primordial black holes and the generation of gravitational waves in a class of cosmological models that are direct supersymmetric analogs of the observationally favored nonminimally coupled Higgs inflation model. It is known that this type of model naturally includes multiple scalar fields which may be regarded as the inflaton. For the sake of simplicity we focus on the case where the inflaton field space is two dimensional. We analyze the multifield dynamics and find the region of parameters that gives copious production of primordial black holes that may comprise a …
We study the possibility that particle production during inflation can source the required power spectrum for dark matter (DM) primordial black holes (PBH) formation. We consider the scalar and the gauge quanta production in inflation models, where in the latter case, we focus in two sectors: inflaton coupled i) directly and ii) gravitationally to a $U(1)$ gauge field. We do not assume any specific potential for the inflaton field. Hence, in the gauge production case, in a model independent way we show that the non-production of DM PBHs puts stronger upper bound on the particle production para…
We study the process of primordial black hole (PBH) formation at the beginning of radiation era for the cosmological scenario in which the inflaton is a pseudo-Nambu-Goldstone boson (axion) and there is a coupling of the inflaton with some gauge field. In this model inflation is accompanied by the gauge quanta production and a strong rise of the curvature power spectrum amplitude at small scales (along with non-Gaussianity) is predicted. We show that data on PBH searches can be used for a derivation of essential constraints on the model parameters in such an axion inflation scenario. We compar…
Scalar perturbations during inflation can be substantially amplified by tiny features in the inflaton potential. A bump-like feature behaves like a local speed-breaker and lowers the speed of the scalar field, thereby locally enhancing the scalar power spectrum. A bump-like feature emerges naturally if the base inflaton potential $V_b(ϕ)$ contains a local correction term such as $V_b(ϕ)\left[1+\varepsilon(ϕ)\right]$ at $ϕ=ϕ_0$. The presence of such a localised correction term at $ϕ_0$ leads to a large peak in the curvature power spectrum and to an enhanced probability of black hole formation. …
With the recently published Cosmic Microwave Background data from Planck we address the optimized binning of the primordial power spectrum. As an important modification to the usual binning of the primordial spectrum, along with the spectral amplitude of the bins, we allow the position of the bins also to vary. This technique enables us to address the location of the possible broad physical features in the primordial spectrum with relatively smaller number of bins compared to the analysis performed earlier. This approach is in fact a reconstruction method looking for broad features in the prim…
We study a simple extension of quasi-single field inflation in which the inflaton interacts with multiple extra massive scalars known as isocurvatons. Due to the breaking of time translational invariance by the inflaton background, the theory includes kinetic mixings among the inflaton and isocurvatons. These mixings give rise to novel new features in the primordial non-Gaussianities of the scalar curvature perturbation. A noteworthy feature is the amplitude of the squeezed bispectrum can grow nearly as $(k_s/k_l)^{-3}$ while oscillating as ${\rm \cosγ\log}(k_s/k_l)$, where $k_s/k_l$ is the ra…
An inflationary brane model driven by a bulk inflaton with exponential potential is proposed. We find a family of exact solutions that describe power-law inflation on the brane. These solutions enable us to derive exact solutions for metric perturbations analytically. By calculating scalar and tensor perturbations, we obtain a spectrum of primordial fluctuations at the end of the inflation. The amplitudes of scalar and tensor perturbations are enhanced in the same way if the energy scale of the inflation is sufficiently higher than the tension of the brane. Then the relative amplitude of scala…
We discuss cosmic microwave background anisotropies in models with an unconventional primordial power spectrum. In particular, we consider an initial power spectrum with some ``spiky'' corrections. Interestingly, such a primordial power spectrum generates ``wavy'' structure in the CMB angular power spectrum.
We compute the primordial scalar, vector and tensor metric perturbations arising from quantum field inflation. Quantum field inflation takes into account the nonperturbative quantum dynamics of the inflaton consistently coupled to the dynamics of the (classical) cosmological metric. For chaotic inflation, the quantum treatment avoids the unnatural requirements of an initial state with all the energy in the zero mode. For new inflation it allows a consistent treatment of the explosive particle production due to spinodal instabilities. Quantum field inflation (under conditions that are the quant…
We propose a new mechanism to generate primordial curvature perturbations, based on the resonant production of particles during inflation. It is known that this phenomenon can trap the inflaton for a fraction of e-fold. This effect is governed by the mass of the produced particles and by their coupling to the inflaton, parameters which can depend on the expectation value of other fields. If one of such additional fields - a 'modulaton' - is light, then its fluctuations, acquired during the earlier stages of inflation, will induce a spatial modulation of the trapping, and thus of the end of inf…
A model of inflation is presented where the inflaton field is a complex scalar field coupled to a U(1) gauge field. Due to the axial symmetry of the potential, the inflation is driven by the radial direction while the angular field is gauged by U(1). Due to the coupling of the inflaton to the gauge field, a time dependent mass term for the gauge field is generated dynamically and conformal invariance is broken. We study whether a significant amount of primordial magnetic fields can be generated during inflation by allowing a time-dependent U(1) gauge kinetic coupling.
In warm inflation, dissipation due to the interactions of the inflaton field to other light degrees of freedom leads naturally to the enhancement of the primordial spectrum during the last 10-20 efolds of inflation. We study this effect in a variant of the Warm Little Inflaton model, where the inflaton couples to light scalars, with a quartic chaotic potential. These large fluctuations on re-entry will form light, evaporating Primordial Black Holes, with masses lighter than $10^6$ g. But at the same time they will act as a source for the tensors at second order. The enhancement is maximal near…
A recent variant of the inflationary paradigm is that the ``primordial'' curvature perturbations come from quantum fluctuations of a scalar field, subdominant and effectively massless during inflation, called the ``curvaton'', instead of the fluctuations of the inflaton field. We consider the situation where the primordial curvature perturbations generated by the quantum fluctuations of an inflaton and of a curvaton field are of the same order of magnitude. We compute the curvature perturbation and its spectrum in this case and we discuss the observational consequences.
BICEP2 has observed a primordial gravitational wave corresponding to the tensor-to-scalar ratio of 0.16. It seems to require a super-Planckian inflationary model. In this paper, we propose a double hybrid inflation model, where the inflaton potential dynamically changes with the evolution of the inflaton fields. During the first phase of inflation over 7 e-folds, the power spectrum can be almost constant by a large linear term in the hybrid potential, which is responsible also for the large tensor-to-scalar ratio. In the second phase of 50 e-folds, the dominant potential becomes dynamically ch…
We compute the primordial scalar, vector and tensor metric perturbations arising from quantum field inflation. Quantum field inflation takes into account the nonperturbative quantum dynamics of the inflaton consistently coupled to the dynamics of the (classical) cosmological metric. For chaotic inflation, the quantum treatment avoids the unnatural requirements of an initial state with all the energy in the zero mode. For new inflation it allows a consistent treatment of the explosive particle production due to spinodal instabilities. Quantum field inflation (under conditions that are the quant…
We present a gauge invariant formalism to study the evolution of curvature perturbations during decay of the inflaton or some other field that dominates the energy density. We specialize to the case where the total curvature perturbation arises predominantly from a spatially fluctuating decay rate. Gaussian fluctuations in the decay rate are present if the inflaton coupling or mass depends on some light field, which freely fluctuates during inflation. The isocurvature fluctuations of the light field seeds the total curvature perturbations, whose amplitude freezes after inflaton decay. We also …
Primordial Black Holes (PBHs) serve as a unique probe to the physics of the early Universe, particularly inflation. In light of this, we study the formation of PBHs by the collapse of overdense perturbations generated during a model of warm inflation. For our model, we find that the primordial curvature power spectrum is red-tilted (spectral index $n_s<1$) at the large scale (small $k$) and is consistent with the $n_s-r$ values allowed from the CMB observations. Along with that, it has a blue-tilt ($n_s>1$) for the small PBH scales (large $k$), with a sufficiently large amplitude of the primor…
Within the framework of scalar-tensor theories, we study the conditions that allow single field inflation dynamics on small cosmological scales to significantly differ from that of the large scales probed by the observations of cosmic microwave background. The resulting single field double inflation scenario is characterised by two consequent inflation eras, usually separated by a period where the slow-roll approximation fails. At large field values the dynamics of the inflaton is dominated by the interplay between its non-minimal coupling to gravity and the radiative corrections to the inflat…
Current measurements of the Higgs boson mass and top Yukawa coupling suggest that the effective Higgs potential develops an instability below the Planck scale. If the energy scale of inflation is as high as the GUT scale, inflationary quantum fluctuations of the Higgs field can easily destabilize the standard electroweak vacuum and produce a lot of AdS domains. This destabilization during inflation can be avoided if a relatively large nonminimal Higgs-gravity or inflaton-Higgs coupling is introduced. Such couplings generate a large effective mass term for the Higgs, which can raise the effecti…
We present a novel mechanism for the production of primordial black holes (PBHs). The mechanism is based on a period of thermal inflation followed by fast-roll inflation due to tachyonic mass of order the Hubble scale. Large perturbations are generated at the end of the thermal inflation as the thermal inflaton potential turns from convex to concave. These perturbations can lead to copious production of PBHs when the relevant scales re-enter horizon. We show that such PBHs can naturally account for the observed dark matter in the Universe when the mass of the thermal inflaton is about $10^6\,$…
We report on a novel phenomenon of the resonance effect of primordial density perturbations arisen from a sound speed parameter with an oscillatory behavior, which can generically lead to the formation of primordial black holes in the early Universe. For a general inflaton field, it can seed primordial density fluctuations and their propagation is governed by a parameter of sound speed square. Once if this parameter achieves an oscillatory feature for a while during inflation, a significant non-perturbative resonance effect on the inflaton field fluctuations takes place around a critical lengt…
We compute the large scalar four-point correlation functions in general single field inflation models, where the inflaton Lagrangian is an arbitrary function of the inflaton and its first derivative. We find that the leading order trispectra have four different shapes determined by three parameters. We study features in these shapes that can be used to distinguish among themselves, and between them and the trispectra of the local form. For the purpose of data analyses, we give two simple representative forms for these "equilateral trispectra". We also study the effects on the trispectra if the…
A possible origin of the anomalous dip and bump in the primordial power spectrum, which are reconstructed from WMAP data corresponding to the multipole $\ell=100\sim 140$ by using the inversion method, is investigated as a consequence of modification of scalar field dynamics in the inflation era. Utilizing an analytic formula to handle higher order corrections to the slow-roll approximation, we evaluate the relation between a detailed shape of inflaton potential and a fine structure in the primordial power spectrum. We conclude that it is unlikely to generate the observed dip and bump in the p…
In the ``natural inflation'' model, the inflaton potential is periodic. We show that Planck scale physics may induce corrections to the inflaton potential, which is also periodic with a greater frequency. Such high frequency corrections produce oscillating features in the primordial fluctuation power spectrum, which are not entirely excluded by the current observations and may be detectable in high precision data of cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropy and large scale structure (LSS) observations.
We study scalar field fluctuations of the inflaton field in an early inflationary universe on an effective 4D Schwarzschild-de Sitter (SdS) metric, which is obtained after make a planar coordinate transformation on a 5D Ricci-flat Schwarzschild-de Sitter (SdS) static metric. We obtain the important result that the spectrum of fluctuations at zeroth order is independent of the scalar field mass $M$ on Schwarzschild scales, while on cosmological scales it exhibits a mass dependence. However, in the first-order expansion, the spectrum depends of the inflaton mass and the amplitude is linear with …
These notes present a detailed introduction to Maldacena's calculation of the three-point function generated by the simplest class of inflationary models: those with a single inflaton field whose potential satisfies the slow-roll conditions and whose quantum fluctuations start in the asymptotic Bunch-Davies vacuum state. The three-point function should be the most readily observed evidence for non-Gaussianities amongst the primordial fluctuations produced by inflation. In these inflationary theories the non-Gaussianities are predicted to be extremely small, being naturally suppressed by the sm…
In this paper we break the scale invariance of the primordial power spectrum of curvature perturbations of inflation. Introducing a singular behaviour due to spontaneous symmetry breaking in the inflaton potential, we obtain fully analytic expressions of scale dependent oscillation and a modulation in power on small scale in the primordial spectrum. And we give the associated cosmic microwave background and matter power spectra which we can observe now and discuss the signature of the scale dependence. We also address the possibility of whether some inflationary model with featured potential m…
We present a non-thermal leptogenesis scenario following standard supersymmetric hybrid inflation, in the case where light neutrinos acquire mass via the usual seesaw mechanism and inflaton decay to heavy right-handed neutrino superfields is kinematically disallowed, or the right-handed neutrinos which can be decay products of the inflaton are unable to generate sufficient baryon asymmetry via their subsequent decay. The primordial lepton asymmetry is generated through the decay of the inflaton into light particles by the interference of one-loop diagrams with exchange of different right-hande…
We study models in which the inflaton is coupled to two otherwise decoupled sectors, and the effect of preheating and related processes on their energy densities during the evolution of the universe. Over most of parameter space, preheating is not disrupted by the presence of extra sectors, and even comparatively weakly coupled sectors can get an order 1 fraction of the total energy at this time. If two sectors are both preheated, the high number densities could also lead to inflaton mediated thermalisation. If only one sector is preheated, Bose enhancement of the late time inflaton decays may…
