Related papers: The Multiverse Hierarchy
In the picture of eternal inflation as driven by a scalar potential with multiple minima, our observable universe resides inside one of many bubbles formed from transitions out of a false vacuum. These bubbles necessarily collide, upsetting…
It has been known for some time that the usual inference drawn from the observed near-flatness of the large-scale Universe - namely the existence of a cosmological "flatness problem", which is then taken as a partial, but key motivation for…
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…
We discuss the possibility that the inflationary paradigm, undoubtfully today's best framework to understand all the present cosmological data, may still have some viable challengers. The underlying idea for such discussions is that…
These lectures provide an introductory review of big bang cosmology. I discuss the expanding Friedmann-Robertson-Walker universe, summarizing the observational evidence which has led to its adoption as the `standard' cosmological model and…
The universal validity of the second law of thermodynamics is widely attributed to a finely tuned initial condition of the universe. This creates a problem: why is the universe atypical? We suggest that the problem is an artefact created by…
Speculations and theories about the existence of other worlds have a long history. In recent times, the arguments have shifted away from their typical philosophical and theological character to supposedly become more objective thanks to…
In this paper we work out a multiverse scenario whose physical characteristics enable us to advance the following the conjecture that whereas the physics of particles and fields is confined to live in the realm of the whole multiverse…
We study the cosmological perturbations for the possible inflation scenario in the teleparallel equivalence of general relativity specified with parallelizable topological conditions. By acquiring the identical physical observables to…
If our observable Universe is only a tiny region of a vastly larger and conformally older spacetime, then the usual formulations of the classical flatness and horizon problems of the Hot Big Bang can be reinterpreted as artifacts…
A new, very different physical model of the universe is proposed. Its virtues include unifying relativity and quantum mechanics, and particles with de Broglie waves. It also appears to provide a truly unified physical basis for…
Modern scientific cosmology pushes the boundaries of knowledge and the knowable. This is prompting questions on the nature of scientific knowledge. A central issue is what defines a 'good' model. When addressing global properties of the…
The model of the Universe in this paper uses equations of the unperturbed Keplerian motion. They have been updated, complementied and generalized when the solution of these equations is the characteristic function of a random value from the…
We establish purely geometric or metric-based criteria for the validity of the separate universe ansatz, under which the evolution of small-scale observables in a long-wavelength perturbation is indistinguishable from a separate…
We study `hilltop' inflation, in which inflation takes place near a maximum of the potential. Viewed as a model of inflation after the observable Universe leaves the horizon (observable inflation) hilltop inflation is rather generic. If the…
Closed, singularity-free, inflationary cosmological models have recently been studied in the context of general relativity. Despite their appeal, these so called emergent models suffer from a number of limitations. These include the fact…
Various scenarios of the initial inflation of the universe are distinguished by the choice of a scalar field {\em potential} $U(\phi)$ which simulates a {\it temporarily} non--vanishing {\em cosmological term}. Our new method, which…
Inflation is an early period of accelerated cosmic expansion, thought to be sourced by high energy physics. A key task today is to use the influx of increasingly precise observational data to constrain the plethora of inflationary models…
Informed by a quantum information perspective, we interpret cosmological expansion of space as growing entanglement between underlying degrees of freedom. In particular, we focus on inflationary cosmology, which, while being a successful…
Focus of these lectures is the challenge of explaining the origin of structure in the Universe. The interplay between quantum field theory and classical general relativity has given rise to several interesting cosmological models which…