Related papers: Phenomenological analysis of quantum collapse as s…
Quantum effects play an essential role in modern cosmology. Perhaps the most striking example comes from large-scale structures, generally assumed to originate from vacuum quantum fluctuations and stretched by an expansion phase. Inflation…
We investigate the quantum cosmological tunneling scenario for inflationary models. Within a path-integral approach, we derive the corresponding tunneling probability distribution. A sharp peak in this distribution can be interpreted as the…
The observed classicality of primordial perturbations, despite their quantum origin during inflation, calls for a mechanism for quantum-to-classical transition of these initial fluctuations. As literature suggests a number of plausible…
Observations of the cosmic microwave sky are revealing the primordial non-uniformities from which all structure in the Universe grew. The only known physical mechanism for generating the inhomogeneities we see involves the amplification of…
"The self-induced collapse hypothesis" was introduced by D. Sudarsky and collaborators to explain the origin of cosmic structure from a perfect isotropic and homogeneous universe during the inflationary regime. In this paper, we calculate…
We propose that cosmological density perturbation may originate from passive fluctuations of the inflaton, which are induced by colored quantum noise due to the coupling of the inflaton to the quantum environment. At small scales, the…
We examine from first principles one of the basic assumptions of modern quantum theories of structure formation in the early universe, i.e., the conditions upon which fluctuations of a quantum field may transmute into classical stochastic…
We review the particle theory origin of inflation and curvaton mechanisms for generating large scale structures and the observed temperature anisotropy in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation. Since inflaton or curvaton energy…
These notes are intended as an introductory course for experimental particle physicists interested in the recent developments in astrophysics and cosmology. I will describe the standard Big Bang theory of the evolution of the universe, with…
We examine the dynamics of a closed cosmology whose matter source is that of a conformally coupled scalar field with a broken ${\rm SO}(1,1)$ symmetry, which correspond to the $\alpha$-attractors proposed by Linde and Kallosh. Following a…
Quantum field theory, which is generally used to describe the origin of large-scale gravitational perturbations during cosmic inflation, has been shown to omit an important physical effect in curved space-time, the nonlocal entanglement…
Inflationary scenario based on a renormalizable model of conformal gravity is proposed and primordial spectrum is derived. The sharp fall off of the angular power spectra at low multipoles in the COBE and WMAP observations are explained by…
Cosmic structure on the largest scales preserves the pattern laid down by quantum fluctuations of gravity in the early universe on scales comparable to inflationary horizons. It is proposed here that fluctuations create physical…
Inspired by possible connections between gravity and foundational question in quantum theory, we consider an approach for the adaptation of objective collapse models to a general relativistic context. We apply these ideas to a list of open…
We propose a method to extract predictions from quantum cosmology for inflation that can be confronted with observations. Employing the tunneling boundary condition in quantum geometrodynamics, we derive a probability distribution for the…
The perturbations in the early universe are generated as a result of the interplay between quantum field theory and gravitation. Since these primordial perturbations lead to the anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background and eventually…
We give a detailed presentation of a recently proposed mechanism of generating the energy scale of inflation by loop effects in quantum cosmology. We discuss the quantum origin of the early inflationary Universe from the no-boundary and…
Loop quantum cosmology provides an efficient framework to study the evolution of the Universe beyond the classical Big Bang paradigm. Because of holonomy corrections, the singularity is replaced by a "bounce". The dynamics of the background…
The primordial bispectrum has been considered in the past decade as a powerful probe of the physical processes taking place in the early Universe. Within the inflationary paradigm, the properties of the bispectrum are one of the keys that…
In these lectures I review the standard hot big-bang cosmology, emphasizing its successes, its shortcomings, and its major challenge---a detailed understanding of the formation of structure in the Universe. I then discuss the motivations…