Related papers: A Meandering Inflaton
We propose a method to extract predictions from quantum cosmology for inflation that can be confronted with observations. Employing the tunneling boundary condition in quantum geometrodynamics, we derive a probability distribution for the…
In this paper we consider inflation as a probe of new physics near the string or Planck scale. We discuss how new physics can be captured by the choice of vacuum, and how this leads to modifications of the primordial spectrum as well as the…
We consider inflation driven near a saddle point in a higher dimensional field space, which is the most likely type of slow roll inflation on the string theoretical landscape; anthropic arguments need to be invoked in order to find a…
We perform a semi-classical analysis of the Emergent Universe scenario for inflation. Fixing the background, and taking the inflaton to be homogenous, we cast the inflaton's evolution as a one-dimensional quantum mechanics problem. We find…
Loop quantum cosmology with a scalar field is known to be closely linked with an inflationary phase. In this article, we study probabilistic predictions for the duration of slow-roll inflation, by assuming a minimalist massive scalar field…
A class of well-motivated models of inflation end by producing cosmic strings. The current status of efforts to calculate and observe the signals from such models are outlined, with a particular emphasis on cosmic strings, and on the Cosmic…
I consider the generic model independent predictions of the theory of quantum cosmological perturbations. To describe the stage of cosmic inflation, where these perturbations are amplified, the hydrodynamical approch is used. The…
There is strong evidence from cosmological data that the universe underwent an epoch of superluminal expansion called inflation. A satisfactory embedding of inflation in fundamental physics has been an outstanding problem at the interface…
The apparent alignment of the cosmic microwave background multipoles on large scales challenges the standard cosmological model. Scalar field inflation is isotropic and cannot account for the observed alignment. We explore the imprints, a…
Chain Inflation is an alternative to slow roll inflation in which the universe undergoes a series of transitions between different vacua. The density perturbations (studied in this paper) are seeded by the probabilistic nature of tunneling…
We study an inflation mechanism based on attractor properties in cosmological evolutions of a spatially flat Friedmann-Robertson-Walker spacetime based on the Einstein-scalar field theory. We find a new way to get the Hamilton-Jacobi…
Inflationary scenarios motivated by high-energy physics generically contain a plethora of degrees of freedom beyond the primordial curvature perturbation. The latter interacts in a simple way with what we name "inflationary flavor…
If the initial state of the inflaton field is taken to have a thermal distribution instead of the conventional zero particle vacuum state then the curvature power spectrum gets modified by a temperature dependent factor such that the…
A novel scalar field free approach to cosmic inflation is presented. The inflationary Universe and the radiation dominated Universe are shown, within the framework of unified brane cosmology, to be two different phases governed by one and…
We present an inflationary model that is geodesically complete and does not suffer from the transplanckian problem. In most inflationary models, massless (conformal) scalar field fluctuations in a deSitter background gives rise to a…
The theory of cosmological fluctuations assumes that the pre-inflationary state of the universe was the quantum vacuum of a scalar field(s) coupled to gravity. The observed cosmic microwave background fluctuations are then interpreted as…
In the context of loop quantum cosmology, we consider an inflationary era driven by a canonical scalar field and occurring in the semiclassical regime, where spacetime is a continuum but quantum gravitational effects are important. The…
An approach to construct cosmological inflation models on the basis of a certain dependence of the scalar field evolution on the e-folds number is considered. The reconstruction of the model background parameters according to the kind of…
The Higgs field is an attractive candidate for the inflaton because it is an observationally confirmed fundamental scalar field. Importantly, it can be modeled by the most general renormalizable scalar potential. However, if the classical…
We prove that in the Hartle-Hawking approach to quantum cosmology the existence of an inflationary phase is a general property of minisuperspace models given by a closed Friedmann-Robertson-Walker universe containing a massless scalar field…