The Observational Status of Cosmic Inflation after Planck

Abstract

The observational status of inflation after the Planck 2013 and 2015 results and the BICEP2/Keck Array and Planck joint analysis is discussed. These pedagogical lecture notes are intended to serve as a technical guide filling the gap between the theoretical articles on inflation and the experimental works on astrophysical and cosmological data. After a short discussion of the central tenets at the basis of inflation (negative self-gravitating pressure) and its experimental verifications, it reviews how the most recent Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) anisotropy measurements constrain cosmic inflation. The fact that vanilla inflationary models are, so far, preferred by the observations is discussed and the reason why plateau-like potential versions of inflation are favored within this subclass of scenarios is explained. Finally, how well the future measurements, in particular of $B$-Mode CMB polarization or primordial gravity waves, will help to improve our knowledge about inflation is also investigated.

108 pages, 22 figures. Lectures given at the II JPBCosmo school (Brazil)

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Cited by in corpus (75)

• The First Three Seconds: a Review of Possible Expansion Histories of the Early Universe
• Inflaton Oscillations and Post-Inflationary Reheating
• Primordial black holes from the preheating instability
• Enhancement of the Dark Matter Abundance Before Reheating: Applications to Gravitino Dark Matter
• Calculations of Inflaton Decays and Reheating: with Applications to No-Scale Inflation Models
• Preheating after Multifield Inflation with Nonminimal Couplings, I: Covariant Formalism and Attractor Behavior
• Preheating after Higgs Inflation: Self-Resonance and Gauge boson production
• A Flux-Scaling Scenario for High-Scale Moduli Stabilization in String Theory
• Cosmological Inflation in f(Q, T) Gravity
• Towards accurate cosmological predictions for rapidly oscillating scalar fields as dark matter
• Decoding the phases of early and late time reheating through imprints on primordial gravitational waves
• Slow-roll inflation in f(R,T) gravity and a modified Starobinsky-like inflationary model
• Metric preheating and radiative decay in single-field inflation
• Multipartite Dark Matter with Scalars, Fermions and signatures at LHC
• Boltzmann or Bogoliubov? Approaches Compared in Gravitational Particle Production
• Non Gaussianities from Quantum Decoherence during Inflation
• Observational imprints of enhanced scalar power on small scales in ultra slow roll inflation and associated non-Gaussianities
• Unified No-Scale Attractors
• Accounting for the time evolution of the equation of state parameter during reheating
• A General Classification of Starobinsky-like Inflationary Avatars of SU(2,1)/SU(2) x U(1) No-Scale Supergravity
• No-Scale Inflation
• Time-Scales for Nonlinear Processes in Preheating after Multifield Inflation with Nonminimal Couplings
• Universality and scaling in multi-field $\alpha$-attractor preheating
• De Sitter Vacua in No-Scale Supergravity
• Towards the most general scalar-tensor theories of gravity: a unified approach in the language of differential forms
• Radiative plateau inflation
• Loop contributions to the scalar power spectrum due to quartic order action in ultra slow roll inflation
• Shortcomings of New Parametrizations of Inflation
• Starobinsky-Like Inflation and Neutrino Masses in a No-Scale SO(10) Model
• Testing non-minimally coupled inflation with CMB data: a Bayesian analysis
• Symmetry Breaking and Reheating after Inflation in No-Scale Flipped SU(5)
• Duality and scale invariant magnetic fields from bouncing universes
• Viable tensor-to-scalar ratio in a symmetric matter bounce
• On the challenges in the choice of the non-conformal coupling function in inflationary magnetogenesis
• Enhanced power on small scales and evolution of quantum state of perturbations in single and two field inflationary models
• Can non-minimal coupling restore the consistency condition in bouncing universes?
• Primordial features from ekpyrotic bounces
• Primordial black hole versus inflaton
• Inflationary Cosmology in the Modified $f(R,T)$ Gravity
• Effective models of inflation from a non-local framework
• Non-Gaussianity in multiple three-form field inflation
• Conformal GUT inflation, proton lifetime and non-thermal leptogenesis
• Explanatory Depth in Primordial Cosmology: A Comparative Study of Inflationary and Bouncing Paradigms
• Viable scalar spectral tilt and tensor-to-scalar ratio in near-matter bounces
• Opening the reheating box in multifield inflation
• Constraining the history of reheating with the NANOGrav 15-year data
• Non-Oscillatory No-Scale Inflation
• Quintessential Inflation in Palatini Gravity
• Detecting primordial gravitational waves with circular polarization of the redshifted 21 cm line: I. Formalism
• From Minkowski to de Sitter in Multifield No-Scale Models
• Non-local Starobinsky inflation in the light of future CMB
• Detecting primordial gravitational waves with circular polarization of the redshifted 21 cm line: II. Forecasts
• Constraints on cosmological parameters in light of the scalar-tensor theory of gravity and swampland conjectures
• Limits on Entanglement Effects in the String Landscape from Planck and BICEP/Keck Data
• Observable r, Gravitino Dark Matter, and Non-thermal Leptogenesis in No-Scale Supergravity
• Towards a unified interpretation of the early Universe in $R^2$-corrected dark energy model of $F(R)$ gravity
• Stable contraction in Brans-Dicke cosmology
• The inflationary scenario in the $f(R)$ gravity model with a $R^4$ term
• A response to criticisms on "CMB Constraints Cast a Shadow on CSL Model"
• Dark matter and Standard Model reheating from conformal GUT inflation
• Suppression of scalar power on large scales and associated bispectra
• Amplifying quantum discord during inflationary magnetogenesis through violation of parity
• Primary gravitational waves at high frequencies I: Origin of suppression in the power spectrum
• More on the Non-Gaussianity of Perturbations in a Non-Minimal Inflationary Model
• The fate of Quasi-Exponential inflation in the light of ACT-DR6
• The Dynamics of Inhomogeneous Dark Energy
• Unifying inflationary and reheating solution
• The scalar-scalar-tensor inflationary three-point function in the axion monodromy model
• Universe bouncing its way to inflation
• Numerical evaluation of the tensor bispectrum in two field inflation
• A fresh view of cosmological models describing very early Universe: general solution of the dynamical equations
• Cosmological free-free emission from dark matter halos in the $\Lambda$CDM model
• Bayes' Theorem, Inflation, and the Ekpyrotic Universe
• Returning Back to Mukhanov Parametrization of Inflationary Equation of State
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