Multiple Field Inflation and Signatures of Heavy Physics in the CMB

Abstract

In this master thesis we study multi-field inflation and the UV sensitivity of certain models of inflation in supergravity. We first introduce inflation and its current observational status. Then we provide an overview of studies of multiple field inflation in the literature. We translate between the different notations and definitions used in various papers and study the different approximation schemes and their regime of validity. Finally we perform a numerical study of models of multi-field inflation from recent papers in the literature. We study if the current and future experiments might be able to detect the presence of the additional fields in these models.

88 pages, 26 figures, master thesis

References in corpus (8)

• Three Year Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) Observations: Polarization Analysis
• Curvature and isocurvature perturbations in two-field inflation
• Mass hierarchies and non-decoupling in multi-scalar field dynamics
• Heavy fields, reduced speeds of sound and decoupling during inflation
• Strongly Coupled Perturbations in Two-Field Inflationary Models
• The Imaginary Starobinsky Model
• A No-Scale Inflationary Model to Fit Them All
• Is Imaginary Starobinsky Model Real?