Related papers: CMB anisotropies from acausal scaling seeds
In recent years, some studies have drawn attention to the lack of large-angle correlations in the observed cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature anisotropies with respect to that predicted within the standard $\Lambda$CDM model.…
The advent of high resolution cosmic microwave background (CMB) experiments now allows studies on the temperature fluctuations at scales corresponding to few arcminutes and below. Though the reported excess power at $\ell \sim 2000 - 6000$…
In this talk we elaborate on a mechanism to generate local contributions to the curvature perturbation in isolated patches of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). The mechanism, based on the generation of an out-of-equilibrium…
Non-linear evolution of cosmological energy density fluctuations triggers deviations from Gaussianity in the temperature distribution of the cosmic microwave background. A method to estimate these deviations is proposed. N-body simulations…
The shift-symmetric coupling of a pseudo-scalar particle driving inflation to gauge fields provides a unique way of probing cosmic inflation. We show for an SU(2) gauge group how a classical isotropic background gauge field develops from…
The predictions of the inflationary LCDM paradigm match today's high-precision measurements of the cosmic microwave background anisotropy extremely well. The same data put tight limits on other sources of anisotropy. Cosmic strings are a…
The correspondence of single-field cosmological models based on Einstein gravity to modern observational data is considered. A method is proposed to determine possible types of dynamics based on extreme values of the scalar field. It is…
The existence of the inflationary era in the early Universe seems to be strongly supported by recent CMB observations. However, only a few realistic inflation scenarios which have close relation to particle physics seem to have been known…
We calculate predictions from defect models of structure formation for both the matter and Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) over all observable scales. Our results point to a serious problem reconciling the observed large-scale galaxy…
In standard inflationary cosmology, scalar and tensor perturbations grew as the Universe expanded and froze when their wavelengths exceeded the Hubble horizon, producing a tell-tale signature in the fluctuation spectrum and amplitude of the…
Cosmic strings formed during inflation are expected to be either diluted over super-Hubble distances, i.e., invisible today, or to have crossed our past light cone very recently. We discuss the latter situation in which a few strings…
Global, symmetry-breaking phase transitions in the early universe can generate scaling seed networks which lead to metric perturbations. The acoustic waves in the photon-baryon plasma sourced by these metric perturbations, when Silk damped,…
Astronomical observations suggest that the Universe may be anisotropic on the largest scales. In order to model this situation, we develop a new approach to cosmology that allows for large-scale anisotropy to emerge from the growth of…
We propose that several of the anomalies that have been observed at large angular scales in the CMB have a common origin in a cosmic bounce that took place before the inflationary era. The bounce introduces a new physical scale in the…
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…
Recent tentative findings of non-Gaussian structure in the COBE-DMR dataset have triggered renewed attention to candidate models from which such intrinsic signature could arise. In the framework of slow roll inflation with built-in non…
Most of the analysis of the Cosmic Microwave Background relies on the assumption of statistical isotropy. However, given some recent evidence pointing against isotropy, as for instance the observed alignment of different multipoles on large…
The hypothesis of the self-induced collapse of the inflaton wave function was proposed as responsible for the emergence of inhomogeneity and anisotropy at all scales. This proposal was studied within an almost de Sitter space-time…
Models of inflation are instructive playgrounds for supersymmetry breaking in Supergravity and String Theory. In particular, combinations of branes and orientifolds that are not mutually BPS can lead to \emph{brane supersymmetry breaking},…
I highlight the remarkable advances in the past few years in CMB research on total primary anisotropies, in determining the power spectrum, deriving cosmological parameters from it, and more generally lending credence to the basic…