Related papers: The Cosmological Constant Problem and Inflation in…
The early cosmic inflation, when taken along with the recent observations that the universe is currently dominated by a low density vacuum energy, leads to at least two potential problems which modern cosmology must address. First, there is…
The braneworld cosmology, in which our universe is imbedded as a hypersurface in a higher dimensional bulk, has the peculiar property that the inflationary consistency relation derived in a four-dimensional cosmology persists. This…
Next year we will celebrate 100 years of the cosmological term, $\Lambda$, in Einstein's gravitational field equations, also 50 years since the cosmological constant problem was first formulated by Zeldovich, and almost about two decades of…
Space-based missions studying the cosmic microwave background (CMB) have progressively refined the parameter space in conventional models of inflation shortly ($\sim 10^{-37}$ seconds) after the big bang. While most inflationary scenarios…
The creation of a quantum Universe is described by a {\em density matrix} which yields an ensemble of universes with the cosmological constant limited to a bounded range $\Lambda_{\rm min}\leq \Lambda \leq \Lambda_{\rm max}$. The domain…
In String theory realizations of inflation, the end point of inflation is often brane-anti brane annihilation. We consider the processes of reheating of the Standard Model universe after brane inflation. We identify the channels of inflaton…
We demonstrate that a gas of wrapped branes in the early Universe can help resolve the cosmological Dine-Seiberg/Brustein-Steinhardt overshoot problem in the context of moduli stabilization with steep potentials in string theory. Starting…
We propose a technically natural scenario whereby an initially large cosmological constant (c.c.) is relaxed down to the observed value due to the dynamics of a scalar evolving on a very shallow potential. The model crucially relies on a…
Some time ago we have suggested that positive vacuum energy exhibits a finite quantum break time, which can be a signal that a positive cosmological constant is inconsistent. From the requirement that Universe never undergoes through…
The idea that the vacuum energy density $\rho_{\Lambda}$ could be time dependent is a most reasonable one in the expanding Universe; in fact, much more reasonable than just a rigid cosmological constant for the entire cosmic history. Being…
In this Letter we discuss the issues of the graceful exit from inflation and of matter creation in the context of a recent scenario \cite{RHBrev} in which the back-reaction of long wavelength cosmological perturbations induces a negative…
I present a brief review of astro-ph/0406099, which argues that there is a limit on the number of efolds of inflation which are observable in a universe which undergoes an eternally accelerated expansion in the future. Such an acceleration…
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…
We examine the issue of the cosmological constant in the $many$ $inflating$ branes scenario, extending on two recent models by I.Oda and Randall-Sundrum. The exact solution in a closed form is found in the slow roll approximation of the…
This thesis is dedicated to studying cosmological inflation, which is a period of accelerated expansion in the very early Universe that is required to explain the observed anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background. Inflation, when…
Standard cosmology has long been plagued by a number of persistent problems. The origin of the apparent acceleration of the cosmic expansion remains enigmatic. The cosmological constant has been reintroduced as a free parameter with a value…
It has recently been realized that many theories of physics beyond the Standard Model give rise to cosmological histories exhibiting extended epochs of cosmological stasis. During such epochs, the abundances of different energy components…
We provide a comprehensive discussion of the Everpresent $\Lambda$ cosmological model arising from fundamental principles in causal set theory and unimodular gravity. In this framework the value of the cosmological constant ($\Lambda$)…
We consider a brane cosmology scenario by taking an inflating 3D domain wall immersed in a five-dimensional Minkowski space in the presence of a stack of $N$ parallel domain walls. They are static BPS solutions of the bosonic sector of a 5D…
In the picture of eternal inflation as driven by a scalar potential with multiple minima, our observable universe resides inside one of many bubbles formed from transitions out of a false vacuum. These bubbles necessarily collide, upsetting…