Related papers: The warm inflationary universe
The big bang model and the history of the early universe according to the grand unified theories are introduced. The shortcomings of big bang are discussed together with their resolution by inflationary cosmology. Inflation, the subsequent…
The understanding of the primordial mechanism that seeded the cosmic structures we observe today in the sky is one of the major goals in cosmology. The leading paradigm for such a mechanism is provided by the inflationary scenario, a period…
When did the universe thermalize? In this talk I review the status of this issue and its importance in establishing the expected properties of dark matter, the growth of large-scale structure, and the viability of inflation models when…
Inflation provides a unified paradigm for understanding the isotropy of the cosmic microwave background (CMB), the flatness problem, and the origin of large-scale structure. Although the physics responsible for inflation is not yet well…
Inflationary cosmology has, in the last few years,received a strong dose of support from observations. The fact that the fluctuation spectrum can be extracted from the inflationary scenario through an analysis that involves quantum field…
We give a consistent description of how the inflationary Universe emerges in quantum cosmology. This involves two steps: Firstly, it is shown that a sensible probability peak can be obtained from the cosmological wave function. This is…
Cosmic inflation is one of the most important paradigms in modern cosmology. In its simplest form, inflation is driven by a single inflaton field. However, multi-field inflation has become increasingly attractive because it can solve many…
Due to the quasi-exponential red-shifting which occurs during an inflationary period in the very early Universe, wavelengths which at the present time correspond to cosmological lengths are in general sub-Planckian during the early stages…
This is a review of particle-theory models of inflation, and of their predictions for the primordial density perturbation that is thought to be the origin of structure in the Universe. It contains mini-reviews of the relevant observational…
The recently released data from the $\textit{Atacama Cosmology Telescope}$ (ACT) confirms that the primordial scalar spectrum is extremely flat. This, together with current upper bounds on the tensor-to-scalar ratio, implies that the…
The discovery of dark energy (DE) as the physical cause for the accelerated expansion of the Universe is the most remarkable experimental finding of modern cosmology. However, it leads to insurmountable theoretical difficulties from the…
The basic workings of inflationary models are summarized, along with the arguments that strongly suggest that our universe is the product of inflation. I describe the quantum origin of density perturbations, giving a heuristic derivation of…
Despite its central role in modern cosmology, doubts are often expressed as to whether cosmological inflation is really a falsifiable theory. We distinguish two facets of inflation, one as a theory of initial conditions for the hot big bang…
We study an inflation model with a flat scalar potential supported by observations and find that slow-roll inflation can emerge after a quasi-cyclic phase of the Universe, where it undergoes repeated expansions and contractions for a finite…
We consider the fate of the observable universe in the light of the discovery of a dark energy component to the cosmic energy budget. We extend results for a cosmological constant to a general dark energy component and examine the…
A model of cosmological inflation is proposed in which field space is a hyperbolic plane. The inflaton never slow-rolls, and instead orbits the bottom of the potential, buoyed by a centrifugal force. Though initial velocities redshift away…
One of the fundamental problems of modern cosmology is to explain the origin of all the matter and radiation in the Universe today. The inflationary model predicts that the oscillations of the scalar field at the end of inflation will…
In a unified picture both inflation and present dynamical dark energy arise from the same scalar field. The history of the Universe describes a crossover from a scale invariant "past fixed point" where all particles are massless, to a…
The characteristics of the cosmic microwave background provide circumstantial evidence that the hot radiation-dominated epoch in the early universe was preceded by a period of inflationary expansion. Here, we show how a measurement of the…
We investigate inflation within $f(R,\phi)$-theories, where a dynamical scalar field is coupled to gravity. A class of models which can support early-time acceleration with the emerging of an effective cosmological constant at high…