Related papers: The minimum length problem of loop quantum cosmolo…
We use the vacuum Bianchi I model as an example to investigate the concept of physical evolution in Loop Quantum Cosmology (LQC) in the absence of the massless scalar field which has been used so far in the literature as an internal time.…
Non-perturbative corrections from loop quantum cosmology (LQC) to the scalar matter sector is already known to imply inflation. We prove that the LQC modified scalar field generates exponential inflation in the small scale factor regime,…
Although cosmic expansion at very small distances is usually dismissed as entirely inconsequential, these extraordinarily small effects may in fact have a real and significant influence on our world. A calculation suggests that the minute…
General Relativity is an extremely successful theory, at least for weak gravitational fields, however, it breaks down at very high energies, such as in correspondence of the initial singularity. Quantum Gravity is expected to provide more…
Quantum cosmology is traditionally formulated in a minisuperspace setting, implicitly averaging fields over space to obtain homogeneous models. For universal reasons related to the uncertainty principle, quantum corrections then depend on…
The standard model of cosmology assumes a homogeneous and isotropic universe that undergoes a period of exponential expansion very early on, named inflation. This stretches quantum fluctuations from the onset of inflation to cosmological…
Quantum effects are expected to modify the cosmological dynamics of the early universe while maintaining some (potentially discrete) notion of space-time structure. In one approach, loop quantum cosmology, current models are shown here to…
The dynamics of the expectation value of the volume is one of the key ingredients behind the replacement of the Big Bang singularity by a bounce in Loop Quantum Cosmology. As such, it is of great importance that this quantity is…
It is shown that the cosmological singularity in isotropic minisuperspaces is naturally removed by quantum geometry. Already at the kinematical level, this is indicated by the fact that the inverse scale factor is represented by a bounded…
The framework of quantum symmetry reduction is applied to loop quantum gravity with respect to transitively acting symmetry groups. This allows to test loop quantum gravity in a large class of minisuperspaces and to investigate its features…
We use the quantum unimodular theory of gravity to relate the value of the cosmological constant, $\Lambda$, and the energy scale for the emergence of cosmological classicality. The fact that $\Lambda$ and unimodular time are complementary…
We extend the phenomenology of loop quantum cosmology (LQC) to second order in perturbations. Our motivation is twofold. On the one hand, since LQC predicts a cosmic bounce that takes place at the Planck scale, the second order…
The dynamics of an inhomogeneous universe is studied with the methods of Loop Quantum Cosmology as an example of the quantization of vacuum cosmological spacetimes containing gravitational waves (Gowdy spacetimes). The analysis performed at…
We derive the cosmological Big Bounce scenario from the dipole approximation of Loop Quantum Gravity. We show that a non-singular evolution takes place for any matter field and that, by considering a massless scalar field as a relational…
An one-parameter regularization freedom of the Hamiltonian constraint for loop quantum gravity is analyzed. The corresponding spatially flat, homogenous and isotropic model includes the two well-known models of loop quantum cosmology as…
The choice of the regularization scheme in Loop Quantum Cosmology (LQC) is crucial for the predicted phenomenology. We outline how the improved scheme can be naturally realized in Quantum Reduced Loop Gravity, describing the Universe as an…
For the Bianchi type I space-time (vacuum or with a massless scalar field), the loop quantum cosmology bounce can be viewed as a rapid transition between two classical solutions, with a simple transformation rule relating the Kasner…
Loop quantum cosmology is a symmetry reduced quantization of cosmological spacetimes based on loop quantum gravity. While it has been successful in resolution of various cosmological singularities and connecting Planck scale physics to…
Proposing smooth initial conditions is one of the most important tasks in quantum cosmology. On the other hand, the low-energy effective action, appearing in the semiclassical path integral, can get nontrivial quantum corrections near…
This short review is addressed to cosmologists. General relativity predicts that space-time comes to an end and physics comes to a halt at the big-bang. Recent developments in loop quantum cosmology have shown that these predictions cannot…