2026-09-18T21:41:52Zhttps://dspace.mit.edu/server/oai/requestoai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/838092022-01-13T07:54:07Zcom_1721.1_7582com_1721.1_7581col_1721.1_131024
David I. Kaiser.
Mazenc, Edward A
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics
2014-01-09T19:57:24Z
2014-01-09T19:57:24Z
2013
http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/83809
865476107
Thesis (S.B.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Physics, 2013.
Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 63-67).
Cosmic inflation posits that the universe underwent a period of exponential expansion, driven by one or several quantum fields, shortly after the Big Bang. Renormalization requires the fields be non-minimally coupled to gravity. We examine such multifield models and find a rich geometric structure. After a conformal transformation of spacetime, the target field-space acquires non-trivial curvature. We explore two main consequences. First, we construct a field-space covariant framework to study quantum perturbations, extending prior work beyond the slow-roll approximation by working on the full phase space of the theory. Secondly, we show that a wide class of inflationary models can be understood as a geodesic motion on a suitably related manifold. Our geometric approach provides great insight into the (classical) field dynamics, and we have used them to compute non-gaussianities in the cosmic microwave background radiation spectrum.
by Edward A. Mazenc.
S.B.
67 pages
eng
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
M.I.T. theses are protected by
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http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582
Physics.
Multifield inflation and differential geometry
Thesis
application/pdf
Publication
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