Related papers: Observing alternatives to inflation
We consider the cosmological application of a (variant of) relatively newly proposed model \cite{1609.06915} unifying inflation, dark energy, dark matter, and the Higgs mechanism. The model was originally defined using additional…
The notion of inflation (past or present) in standard cosmological models is shown to be a consequence of a sufficiently high second law entropy production from the internal heating of the universal expansion. The longitudinal viscous…
Cosmological inflation is the dominating paradigm to account for observations of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). In this thesis, we study the phenomenology of a class of particularly well motivated models of inflation, known under…
Recently Hollands and Wald argued that inflation does not solve any of the major cosmological problems. We explain why we disagree with their arguments. They also proposed a new speculative mechanism of generation of density perturbations.…
Modifying the standard hot big bang model of cosmology with an inflationary event has been very successful in resolving most of the outstanding cosmological problems. The various inflationary mechanisms proposed depend on the production of…
Inflation in the early Universe is one of the most promising probes of gravity in the high-energy regime. However, observable scales give access to a limited window in the inflationary dynamics. In this essay, we argue that quantum…
In forthcoming years, connections between cosmology and particle physics will be made increasingly important with the advent of a new generation of cosmic microwave background (CMB) experiments. Here, we review a number of these links. Our…
Models of inflationary cosmology can lead to variation of observable parameters ("constants of Nature") on extremely large scales. The question of making probabilistic predictions for today's observables in such models has been investigated…
Problem of cosmological singularity of general relativity theory is discussed. The possible resolution of this problem in the framework of inflationary cosmology is proposed. Physical conditions leading to bouncing inflationary solutions in…
In these lectures the present status of the so-called standard cosmological model, based on the hot Big Bang theory and the inflationary paradigm is reviewed. Special emphasis is given to the origin of the cosmological perturbations we see…
These lectures present a brief review of inflationary cosmology, provide an overview of the theory of cosmological perturbations, and then focus on the conceptual problems of the current paradigm of early universe cosmology, thus motivating…
A self-consistent modular cosmology scenario and its testability in view of future CMB experiments are discussed. Particular attention is drawn to the enhanced symmetric points in moduli space which play crucial roles in our scenario. The…
The standard model of cosmology has provided a good phenomenological description of a wide range of observations both at astrophysical and cosmological scales for several decades. This concordance model is constructed by a universal…
Inflation of a universe filled by an elastic continuous medium is considered. Elastic inflation, while capable of describing current observations, is qualitatively different from standard inflationary models. The scalar and tensor modes…
Inflationary cosmology has provided a predictive and phenomenologically very successful scenario for early universe cosmology. Attempts to implement inflation using scalar fields, however, lead to models with serious conceptual problems. I…
I discuss the current status of inflationary cosmology in light of the recent WMAP 3-year data release. The basic predictions of inflation are all supported by the data. Inflation also makes predictions which have not been well tested by…
Slow-roll inflation generically makes several predictions: a flat Universe, primordial adiabatic density perturbations, and a stochastic gravity-wave background. Each inflation model will further predict specific relations between the…
We review here some recent results that show that inflationary cosmological models must contain initial singularities. We also present a new singularity theorem. The question of the initial singularity re-emerges in inflationary cosmology…
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…
I present a brief review of astro-ph/0406099, which argues that there is a limit on the number of efolds of inflation which are observable in a universe which undergoes an eternally accelerated expansion in the future. Such an acceleration…