Related papers: Cosmological Inflation: Theory and Observations
Measurements of Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) anisotropy have served as the best experimental probe of the early universe to date. The inflationary paradigm, inspired in part by the extreme isotropy of the CMB, is now a cornerstone in…
The leading candidate for the very early universe is described by a period of rapid expansion known as inflation. While the standard paradigm invokes a single slow-rolling field, many different models may be constructed which fit the…
Cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropy may result from both scalar and tensor perturbations. For a sufficiently narrow range of angular scales, CMB perturbations can be characterized by four parameters. Results from the Cosmic…
Recent observations opened up a new window on the inflationary model building. As it was firstly reported by the WMAP data, there may be some indications of statistical anisotropy on the CMB map, although the statistical significance of…
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…
This thesis is centered on three main subjects within the theory of inflation and cosmological perturbations: loop corrections to the power spectrum of curvature fluctuations generated during inflation; evolution of cosmological…
Power spectra always play an important role in the theory of inflation. In particular, the ability to reproduce the galaxy matter power spectrum and the CMB temperature angular power spectrum coefficients to high accuracy is often…
Observational cosmology is in its "golden age" with a vast amount of recent data on the distribution of matter and light in the universe. This data can be used to probe theories of the very early universe. It is small amplitude cosmological…
I review the current status of the theory of Cosmic Inflation. My discussion covers the motivation and implementation of the idea, as well as an analysis of recent successes and open questions. There is a special discussion of the physics…
Inflation is a bold and expansive extension of the Standard Cosmology. It holds the promise to extend our understanding of the Universe to within 10^{-32}sec of the big bang and answer most of the pressing questions in cosmology. Its…
Cosmic Inflation provides an attractive framework for understanding the early universe and the cosmic microwave background. It can readily involve energies close to the scale at which Quantum Gravity effects become important. General…
Inflation has been the driving idea in cosmology for two decades and is a pillar of the New Cosmology. The inflationary paradigm has now passed its first round of significant tests, with two of its three basics predictions confirmed at…
Anisotropies in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) contain a wealth of information about the past history of the universe and the present values of cosmological parameters. I ouline some of the theoretical advances of the last few years.…
The origin of CMB polarization is reviewed. Special emphasis is placed on the cosmological information encoded in it: the nature of primordial fluctuations, the connection with the inflation paradigm. Insights into more recent epochs are…
These lectures provide a pedagogical introduction to inflation and the theory of cosmological perturbations generated during inflation which are thought to be the origin of structure in the universe.
The purpose of these lectures is to give a pedagogical introduction to inflation and the production of primordial perturbations, as well as a review of some of the latest developments in this domain. After a short introduction, we review…
We extend our previous work on the cosmology of Coleman-de Luccia bubble collisions. Within a set of approximations we calculate the effects on the cosmic microwave background (CMB) as seen from inside a bubble which has undergone such a…
Observational Cosmology has indeed made very rapid progress in the past decade. The ability to quantify the universe has largely improved due to observational constraints coming from structure formation Measurements of CMB anisotropy and,…
The curl-modes of Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) polarization probe horizon-scale primordial gravitational waves related to inflation. A significant source of confusion is expected from a lensing conversion of polarization related to…
The observed power spectrum of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) is consistent with inflationary cosmology, which predicts a nearly scale-invariant power spectrum of quantum fluctuations of the inflaton field as they exit the Hubble…