Issues concerning the waterfall of hybrid inflation

Abstract

We discuss the waterfall that ends hybrid inflation. Making some simplifying assumptions, that may be satisfied by GUT inflation models, two issues are addressed. First, the procedure of keeping the quantum fluctuation of the waterfall field only in the regime where it can be regarded as classical. Second, the contribution to the primordial curvature perturbation that is generated during the waterfall. Because the waterfall field is heavy during inflation, the spectrum of this contribution is strongly blue and hence is negligible on cosmological scales.

To appear in proceedings of YKIS2010

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• A Density Spike on Astrophysical Scales from an N-Field Waterfall Transition
• Relic gravitons and high-frequency detectors
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