Sudden variations in the speed of sound during inflation: features in the power spectrum and bispectrum

We employ the formalism of the effective field theory of inflation to study the effects of a sudden change in the speed of sound of the inflationary perturbations. Such an event generates a feature with high frequency oscillations both in the two- and in the three-point functions of the curvature fluctuations. We study, at first order in the magnitude of the change of the speed of sound, the dependence of the power spectrum and of the bispectrum on the duration of the change. In the limit of a very short duration, the oscillations in the power spectrum persist up to very large momenta and the amplitude of the feature in the bispectrum diverges while its location moves to increasing momenta.Comment: 7 pp, 2 figure

Adding helicity to inflationary magnetogenesis

The most studied mechanism of inflationary magnetogenesis relies on the time-dependence of the coefficient of the gauge kinetic term $F_{\mu\nu}\,{F}^{\mu\nu}$. Unfortunately, only extremely finely tuned versions of the model can consistently generate the cosmological magnetic fields required by observations. We propose a generalization of this model, where also the pseudoscalar invariant $F_{\mu\nu}\,\tilde{F}^{\mu\nu}$ is multiplied by a time dependent function. The new parity violating term allows more freedom in tuning the amplitude of the field at the end of inflation. Moreover, it leads to a helical magnetic field that is amplified at large scales by magnetohydrodynamical processes during the radiation dominated epoch. As a consequence, our model can satisfy the observational lower bounds on fields in the intergalactic medium, while providing a seed for the galactic dynamo, if inflation occurs at an energy scale ranging from $10^5$ to $10^{10}$ GeV. Such energy scale is well below that suggested by the recent BICEP2 result, if the latter is due to primordial tensor modes. However, the gauge field is a source of tensors during inflation and generates a spectrum of gravitational waves that can give a sizable tensor to scalar ratio $r={\cal O}(0.2)$ even if inflation occurs at low energies. This system therefore evades the Lyth bound. For smaller values of $r$, lower values of the inflationary energy scale are required. The model predicts fully helical cosmological magnetic fields and a chiral spectrum of primordial gravitational waves.Comment: 17 pages, 4 figures. Minor changes to match the version accepted for publication in JCA

Preheating of massive fermions after inflation: analytical results

Non-perturbative production of fermions after chaotic inflation has been the object of several studies in the very recent past. However, the results in the most interesting case of production of massive fermions in an expanding Universe were so far known only numerically. We provide very simple and readable analytical formulae, both for the spectra of the created fermions and for their total energy density. Their derivation is closely related to the one adopted for bosons and exploits the fact that the production occurs during very short intervals of nonadiabatical change of the fermionic frequency. Our formulae show the presence of resonance bands if the expansion of the Universe is neglected, and their disappearance when the latter is included. As in the bosonic case, this last effect is due to the stochastic character that the expansion gives to the whole process. Backreaction is considered in the last part of the work. All our analytical results are in excellent agreement with the previous numerical ones in the regime of validity of the latter. However, a more accurate scaling for the energy density of the produced fermions is here found.Comment: Final version, 31 pages, 9 figure