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Full-Text Articles in Astrophysics and Astronomy
Phenomenology Of Fermion Production During Axion Inflation, Michael Roberts
Phenomenology Of Fermion Production During Axion Inflation, Michael Roberts
Doctoral Dissertations
We study the production of fermions through a derivative coupling to an axion inflaton and the effects of the produced fermions on the scalar and tensor metric perturbations. We show how such a coupling can arise naturally from supergravity with an axion-like field driving large-field inflation and small instanton-like corrections. We present analytic results for the scalar and tensor power spectra, and estimate the amplitude of the non-Gaussianties in the equilateral regime. The scalar spectrum is found to have a red-tilted spectral index, small non-Gaussianities, and can be dominant over the vacuum contribution. In contrast, the tensor power spectrum from …
Production Of Cosmological Observables During The Inflationary Epoch, Cody Goolsby-Cole
Production Of Cosmological Observables During The Inflationary Epoch, Cody Goolsby-Cole
Doctoral Dissertations
This dissertation proposal explores the production of present day cosmological observables which might have been produced during the inflationary era. The first observable is the current net electric charge of our observable universe produced by charge fluctuations during inflation. Next, we examine the possibility of a signal in the primordial gravitational wave power spectrum produced by a scalar field with a time dependent mass. Finally, we examine primordial magnetic fields produced during inflation through the Ratra model coupling with the Schwinger effect.