Related papers: Inflationary Cosmology as a Probe of Primordial Qu…
We study incomplete relaxation to quantum equilibrium at long wavelengths, during a pre-inflationary phase, as a possible explanation for the reported large-scale anomalies in the cosmic microwave background (CMB). Our scenario makes use of…
The hypothesis of quantum nonequilibrium at the big bang is shown to have observable consequences. For a scalar field on expanding space, we show that relaxation to quantum equilibrium (in de Broglie-Bohm theory) is suppressed for field…
Inflationary cosmology provides a natural mechanism for the generation of primordial perturbations which seed the formation of observed cosmic structure and lead to specific signals of anisotropy in the cosmic microwave background…
Cosmological inflation remains to be a unique mechanism of generation of plausible initial conditions in the early universe. In particular, it generates the primordial quasiclassical perturbations with power spectrum determined by the…
The inflationary and pre-inflationary evolution of scalar modes of cosmological perturbations in a closed universe is analyzed for a loop quantum cosmology model with an inflationary regime consistent with the constraints on inflation…
Inflationary cosmology successfully accounts for the observed properties of primordial fluctuations using quantum field theory in an expanding background. However, the quantum nature of these fluctuations has not been experimentally…
This review article aims at presenting the theory of inflation. We first describe the background spacetime behavior during the slow-roll phase and analyze how inflation ends and the Universe reheats. Then, we present the theory of…
Inflation predicts that quantum fluctuations determine the large scale structure of the Universe. This raises the striking possibility that quantum mechanics, developed to describe nature at short distances, can be tested by studying nature…
The quantum cosmology of the flat Friedmann-Lema{\^i}tre-Robertson-Walker Universe, filled with a scalar field, is considered in the de Broglie-Bohm (dBB) interpretation framework. A stiff-matter quantum bounce solution is obtained. The…
Detailed measurements of the cosmic microwave background indicate the large-scale homogeneity of the universe. On very small scales, we observe however inhomogeneities such as galaxies, stars, planets and ourselves. In the context of hot…
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…
Noncommutative geometry can provide effective description of physics at very short distances taking into account generic effects of quantum gravity. Inflation amplifies tiny quantum fluctuations in the early universe to macroscopic scales…
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…
The theory of cosmological fluctuations assumes that the pre-inflationary state of the universe was the quantum vacuum of a scalar field(s) coupled to gravity. The observed cosmic microwave background fluctuations are then interpreted as…
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…
Inflation in the early Universe is one of the most promising probes of gravity in the high-energy regime. However, observable scales give access to a limited window in the inflationary dynamics. In this essay, we argue that quantum…
The de Broglie-Bohm pilot-wave formulation of quantum theory allows the existence of physical states that violate the Born probability rule. Recent work has shown that in pilot-wave field theory on expanding space relaxation to the Born…
We compute the power spectrum of curvature perturbations in stochastic inflation. This combines the distribution of first crossing times through the end-of-inflation surface, which has been previously studied, with the distribution of the…
We derive the primordial power spectrum of density fluctuations in the framework of quantum cosmology. For this purpose we perform a Born-Oppenheimer approximation to the Wheeler-DeWitt equation for an inflationary universe with a scalar…
Observational tests during the next decade may determine if the evolution of the Universe can be understood from fundamental physical principles, or if special initial conditions, coincidences, and new, untestable physical laws must be…