Rescuing Single Field Inflation from the Swampland

The difficulty of building metastable vacua in string theory has led some to conjecture that, in the string theory landscape, potentials satisfy $\left|\nabla V/V\right|\geq c\sim \mathcal{O}(1)$. This condition, which is supported by different explicit constructions, suggests that the EFTs which lead to metastable de-Sitter vacua belong to what is dubbed as swampland. This condition endangers the paradigm of single field inflation. In this paper, we show how scalar excited initial states cannot rescue single field inflation from the swampland, as they produce large local scalar non-gaussianity, which is in conflict with the Planck upper bound. Instead, we demonstrate that one can salvage single field inflation using excited initial states for tensor perturbations, which in this case produce only large flattened non-gaussianity in the tensor bispectrum. We comment on the possible methods one can prepare such excited initial conditions for the tensor perturbations.Comment: v1: 8 pages double columns, no figures; v2: references added, matched the PLB versio

A Note on Calm Excited States of Inflation

We identify a two-parameter family of excited states within slow-roll inflation for which either the corrections to the two-point function or the characteristic signatures of excited states in the three-point function -- i.e. the enhancement for the flattened momenta configurations-- are absent. These excited states may nonetheless violate the adiabaticity condition maximally. We dub these initial states of inflation calm excited states. We show that these two sets do not intersect, i.e., those that leave the power-spectrum invariant can be distinguished from their bispectra, and vice versa. The same set of calm excited states that leave the two-point function invariant for slow-roll inflation, do the same task for DBI inflation. However, at the level of three-point function, the calm excited states whose flattened configuration signature is absent for slow-roll inflation, will lead to an enhancement for DBI inflation generally, although the signature is smaller than what suggested by earlier analysis. This example also illustrates that imposing the Wronskian condition is important for obtaining a correct estimate of the non-Gaussian signatures.Comment: v1: 13 pages; v2: matched the JCAP versio

Hemispherical Anomaly from Asymmetric Initial States

We investigate if the hemispherical asymmetry in the CMB is produced from "asymmetric" excited initial condition. We show that in the limit where the deviations from the Bunch-Davies vacuum is large and the scale of new physics is maximally separated from the inflationary Hubble parameter, the primordial power spectrum is modulated only by position dependent dipole and quadrupole terms. Requiring the dipole contribution in the power spectrum to account for the observed power asymmetry, $A=0.07\pm0.022$, we show that the amount of quadrupole terms is roughly equal to $A^2$. The {\it mean} local bispectrum, which gets enhanced for the excited initial state, is within the $1\sigma$ bound of Planck 2015 results for a large field model, $f_{\rm NL}\simeq 4.17$, but is reachable by future CMB experiments. The amplitude of the local non-gaussianity modulates around this mean value, depending on the angle that the correlated patches on the 2d CMB surface make with the preferred direction. The amount of variation minimizes for the configuration in which the short and long wavelengths modes are around the preferred pole and $|\vec k_3|\approx |\vec k_{l\approx10}|\ll |\vec k_1|\approx |\vec k_2|\approx |\vec k_{l\approx2500}|$ with $f_{\rm NL}^{\rm min}\approx 3.64$. The maximum occurs when these modes are at the antipode of the preferred pole, $f_{\rm NL}^{\rm max}\approx 4.81$ . The difference of non-gaussianity between these two configurations is as large as $\simeq 1.17$ which can be used to distinguish this scenario from other scenarios that try to explain the observed hemispherical asymmetry.Comment: 7 pages, double column, 3 figures, v2: references added; v3: Final version to appear in PR

Black Holes as Beads on Cosmic Strings

We consider the possibility of formation of cosmic strings with black holes as beads. We focus on the simplest setup where two black holes are formed on a long cosmic string. It turns out the in absence of a background magnetic field and for observationally viable values for cosmic string tensions, $\mu<2\times 10^{-7}$, the tension of the strut in between the black holes has to be less than the ones that run into infinity. This result does not change if a cosmological constant is present. However if the background magnetic field is turned on, we can have stable setups where the tensions of all cosmic strings are equal. We derive the equilibrium conditions in each of these setups depending on whether the black holes are extremal or non-extremal. We obtain cosmologically acceptable solutions with solar mass black holes and intragalactic strength cosmic magnatic field.Comment: v1: 1+13 pages, 1 figure; v2: References added, typos corrected; v3: Matched the published versio

Implications of purely classical gravity for inflationary tensor modes

We discuss the implications of purely classical, instead of quantum, theory of gravity for the gravitational wave spectrum generated during inflation. We show that a positive detection of primordial gravitational waves will no longer suffice to determine the scale of inflation in this case -- even a high-scale model of inflation can bypass the observational constraints due to large uncertainties in the initial classical amplitude of the tensor modes.Comment: v1: 4 pages; v2:6 pages. This is the first paper to argue that a positive detection of B-modes would signify that initial conditions for primordial gravity waves is set by quantum initial conditions and not by classical one

Getting Super-Excited with Modified Dispersion Relations

We demonstrate that in some regions of parameter space, modified dispersion relations can lead to highly populated excited states, which we dub as "super-excited" states. In order to prepare such super-excited states, we invoke dispersion relations that have negative slope in an interim sub-horizon phase at high momenta. This behaviour of quantum fluctuations can lead to large corrections relative to the Bunch-Davies power spectrum, which mimics highly excited initial conditions. We identify the Bogolyubov coefficients that can yield these power spectra. In the course of this computation, we also point out the shortcomings of the gluing method for evaluating the power spectrum and the Bogolyubov coefficients. As we discuss, there are other regions of parameter space, where the power spectrum does not get modified. Therefore, modified dispersion relations can also lead to so-called "calm excited states" as well. We conclude by commenting on the possibility of obtaining these modified dispersion relations within the Effective Field Theory of Inflation.Comment: 1+19 pages, 4 figure

Observing the Structure of the Landscape with the CMB Experiments

Assuming that inflation happened through a series of tunneling in the string theory landscape, it is argued that one can determine the structure of vacua using precise measurements of the scalar spectral index and tensor perturbations at large scales. It is shown that for a vacuum structure where the energy gap between the minima is constant, i.e. $\epsilon_i=i m_f^4$, one obtains the scalar spectral index, $n_s$, to be $\simeq 0.9687$, for the modes that exit the horizon 60 e-folds before the end of inflation. Alternatively, for a vacuum structure in which the energy gap increases linearly with the vacuum index, i.e. $\epsilon_i=\frac{i^2}{2} m_f^4$, $n_s$ turns out to be $\simeq 0.9614$. Both these two models are motivated within the string theory landscape using flux-compactification and their predictions for scalar spectral index are compatible with WMAP results. For both these two models, the results for the scalar spectral index turn out to be independent of $m_f$. Nonetheless, assuming that inflation started at Planckian energies and that there had been successful thermalization at each step, one can constrain $m_f<2.6069\times 10^{-5} m_P$ and $m_f<6.5396\times 10^{-7} m_P$ in these two models, respectively. Violation of the single-field consistency relation between the tensor and scalar spectra is another prediction of chain inflation models. This corresponds to having a smaller tensor/scalar ratio at large scales in comparison with the slow-roll counterparts. Similar to slow-roll inflation, it is argued that one can reconstruct the vacuum structure using the CMB experiments.Comment: v1: 8 pages, 2 figures; v2: grammatical typos corrected, results unchanged v3: To be published in JCA

Matrix Inflation and the Landscape of its Potential

Recently we introduced an inflationary setup in which the inflaton fields are matrix valued scalar fields with a generic quartic potential, M-flation. In this work we study the landscape of various inflationary models arising from M-flation. The landscape of the inflationary potential arises from the dynamics of concentric multiple branes in appropriate flux compactifications of string theory. After discussing the classical landscape of the theory we study the possibility of transition among various inflationary models appearing at different points on the landscape, mapping the quantum landscape of M-flation. As specific examples, we study some two-field inflationary models arising from this theory in the landscape.Comment: v1: 34 pages, 5 figures; v2: To be published in JCAP; v3: JCAP versio

Effect of transitions in the Planck mass during inflation on primordial power spectra

We study the effect of sudden transitions in the effective Planck mass during inflation on primordial power spectra. Specifically, we consider models in which this variation results from the non-minimal coupling of a Brans-Dicke type scalar field. We find that the scalar power spectra develop features at the scales corresponding to those leaving the horizon during the transition. In addition, we observe that the tensor perturbations are largely unaffected, so long as the variation of the Planck mass is below the percent level. Otherwise, the tensor power spectra exhibit damped oscillations over the same scales. Due to significant features in the scalar power spectra, the tensor-to-scalar ratio r shows variation over the corresponding scales. Thus, by studying the spectra of both scalar and tensor perturbations, one can constrain sudden but small variations of the Planck mass during inflation. We illustrate these effects with a number of benchmark single- and two-field models. In addition, we comment on their implications and the possibility to alleviate the tension between the observations of the tensor-to-scalar ratio performed by the Planck and BICEP2 experiments.Comment: 23 pages, 13 figures; to match version accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.