The origin of the Universe and its evolution at its earliest stages remain among the most fascinating questions in cosmology and fundamental physics. In its first moments, the Universe underwent a phase of accelerated expansion known as cosmic inflation, during which quantum fluctuations of the inflaton field were stretched to cosmic scales, seeding the large-scale structures observed today. As the Universe continued to cool, primordial nucleosynthesis occurred within the first few minutes, producing the first atomic nuclei and establishing the initial chemical composition that would shape later cosmic evolution. Around this time, dark matter—whose fundamental nature remains elusive—may have been produced through various mechanisms, including the freeze-out of weakly interacting particles from the primordial thermal bath, decay of thermally coupled particles or the inflaton field itself, or even the collapse of primordial fluctuations into primordial blackholes. Despite a wealth of cosmological observations that have deepened our understanding of the early Universe physics, the mechanism driving inflation and the production of dark matter remain open questions.

Our group’s research delves into these foundational questions. We investigate the physics of inflation, focusing on signatures of primordial non-Gaussianities on cosmic large-scale structure and cosmic microwave background, which offer insights into the processes driving inflation, unveiling degrees of freedom, interactions among them, and symmetries during inflation. We also study the nature and origins of dark matter in the early Universe by probing its influence on cosmic evolution.

Whatever the nature of the dark matter phenomenon is, its relevance for interpreting e.g. the CMB suggests that it originates in the early universe and/or involves physics at high temperatures and energies, perhaps as high as the Planck scale.  Our group is interested both in the production mechanisms and the phenomenological consequences of dark matter models, including the traditional electroweak scale WIMP ones, but above all in alternatives such as light (MeV-GeV) dark matter, axion(like) particles, sterile neutrinos, PeV scale dark matter or primordial black holes. Very often, the physics invoked for dark matter models and production can be associated to altering the early history of the universe and/or to the production of other relics, whose signatures we actively search in astrophysical and cosmological data.