Related papers: Creating Statistically Anisotropic and Inhomogeneo…
Homogeneity is a crucial, but poorly tested, assumption in cosmology. We introduce a new approach which allows us to place limits on the presence of localized structures within essentially our entire observable volume, using cosmic…
These lecture notes cover mainly three connected topics. In the first part we give a detailed treatment of cosmological perturbation theory. The second part is devoted to cosmological inflation and the generation of primordial fluctuations.…
It has been recently proposed that the presence of a temporal electromagnetic field on cosmological scales could explain the phase of accelerated expansion that the universe is currently undergoing. The field contributes as a cosmological…
It is often assumed that primordial perturbations are statistically isotropic, which implies, among other properties, that their power spectrum is invariant under rotations. In this article, we test this assumption by placing…
In a recent proposal using the group field theory approach, a spatially homogeneous (generally anisotropic) universe is described as a quantum gravity condensate of "atoms of space," which allows the derivation of an effective cosmological…
There is something missing in our understanding of the origin of the seeds of Cosmic Structuture. The fact that the fluctuation spectrum can be extracted from the inflationary scenario through an analysis that involves quantum field theory…
In this paper I review some recent, interlinked, work undertaken using cosmological perturbation theory -- a powerful technique for modelling inhomogeneities in the Universe. The common theme which underpins these pieces of work is the…
Phase transitions in the early universe can readily create an observable stochastic gravitational wave background. We show that such a background necessarily contains anisotropies analogous to those of the cosmic microwave background (CMB)…
We propose and develop a formalism to describe and constrain statistically anisotropic primordial perturbations. Starting from a decomposition of the primordial power spectrum in spherical harmonics, we find how the temperature fluctuations…
It is likely that the observed large-angular-scale anisotropies in the microwave background radiation are induced by the cosmological perturbations of quantum-mechanical origin. Such perturbations are now placed in squeezed vacuum quantum…
Scalar fields in the minimal supersymmetric standard model may have large field values during inflation. Because of approximate global symmetry, it is plausible that the phase directions of them are nearly massless during inflation and…
The observable universe is fundamentally inhomogeneous and anisotropic. Quantum description of the generation of these inhomogeneities and anisotropies is ill-understood and unsatisfactory. After providing a brief account of the standard…
A theory of quantum-mechanical generation of cosmological perturbations is considered. The conclusion of this study is that if the large-angular-scale anisotropy in the cosmic microwave background radiation is caused by the long-wavelength…
The genuine quantum gravity effects can already be around us. It is likely that the observed large-angular-scale anisotropies in the microwave background radiation are induced by cosmological perturbations of quantum-mechanical origin. Such…
Primordial scalar perturbations may be generated when complex conformal scalar field rolls down its negative quartic potential. We begin with the discussion of peculiar infrared properties of this scenario. We then consider the statistical…
Besides expanding anisotropically, the universe can also be anisotropic at the level of its (spatial) curvature. In particular, models with anisotropic curvature and isotropic expansion leads both to a $\Lambda$CDM-like phenomenology and to…
We develop and examine the principles governing the formation of distortions in the cosmic microwave background. Distortions in the frequency or spectral distribution of the background probe the thermal history of the universe whereas those…
Primordial quantum fluctuations produced by inflation are conventionally assumed to be statistically homogeneous, a consequence of translational invariance. In this paper we quantify the potentially observable effects of a small violation…
The initial conditions describing seed fluctuations for the formation of structure in standard cosmological models, i.e.the Harrison-Zeldovich distribution, have very characteristic ``super-homogeneous'' properties: they are statistically…
We construct a concrete model of Horndeski bounce with strong gravity in the past. Within this model we show that the correct spectra of cosmological perturbations may be generated at early contracting epoch, with mild fine-tuning ensuring…