Related papers: The cosmological singularity problem
Higher-dimensional braneworld models which contain both bulk and brane curvature terms in the action admit cosmological singularities of rather unusual form and nature. These `quiescent' singularities, which can occur both during the…
We describe how cosmology has converged towards a beautiful model of the Universe: the Big Bang Universe. We praise this model, but show there is a dark side to it. This dark side is usually called ``the cosmological problems'': a set of…
KKLT give a mechanism to generate de Sitter vacua in string theory. And recently, the scenario, {\em landscape}, is suggested to explain the problem of the cosmological constant. In this scenario, the cosmological constant is a de Sitter…
A large class of $\Lambda < 0$ cosmologies have big-bang / big crunch spacetimes with time-symmetric backgrounds and asymptotically AdS Euclidean continuations suggesting a possible holographic realization. We argue that these models…
We study a five-dimensional cosmological model, which suggests that the universe bagan as a discontinuity in a (Higgs-type) scalar field, or alternatively as a conventional four-dimensional phase transition.
We investigate the evolution of scalar metric perturbations across a sudden cosmological transition, allowing for an inhomogeneous surface stress at the transition leading to a discontinuity in the local expansion rate, such as might be…
The work is an attempt to model a scenario of inflation in the framework of Anti de Sit- ter/Conformal Field theory (AdS/CFT) duality, a potentially complete nonperturbative description of quantum gravity via string theory. We look at…
Future singularities arising in a family of models for the expanding Universe, characterized by sharing a convenient parametrization of the energy budget in terms of the deceleration parameter, are classified. Finite-time future…
Cosmic strings, a hot subject in the 1980's and early 1990's, lost its appeal when it was found that it leads to inconsistencies in the power spectrum of the measured cosmic microwave background temperature anisotropies. However,…
Topological defects are thought to be left behind by the cosmological phase transitions which occur as the universe expands and cools. Similar processes can be studied in the phase transitions which take place in the laboratory:…
Inflation has been the leading early universe scenario for two decades, and has become an accepted element of the successful `cosmic concordance' model. However, there are many puzzling features of the resulting theory. It requires both…
Cosmological models with two interacting fluids, each satisfying the strong energy condition, are studied in the framework of classical General Relativity. If the interactions are phenomenologically described by a power law in the scale…
We study the role that tachyon fields may play in cosmology as compared to the well-established use of minimally coupled scalar fields. We first elaborate on a kind of correspondence existing between tachyons and minimally coupled scalar…
We consider string theory in a time dependent orbifold with a null singularity. The singularity separates a contracting universe from an expanding universe, thus constituting a big crunch followed by a big bang. We quantize the theory both…
These lectures deal with our current knowledge of the matter distribution in the universe, focusing on how this is studied via the large-scale structure seen in galaxy surveys. We first assemble the necessary basics needed to understand the…
Over the past century, rooted in the theory of general relativity, cosmology has developed a very successful physical model of the universe: the {\em big-bang model}. Its construction followed different stages to incorporate nuclear…
The existence of stars and galaxies reqires cosmological models with an inhomogeneous matter and radiation distribution. But in these models the initial singularity surface t_0(r) is in general homogeneous (independent of r). In this second…
In this talk we discuss the cosmic singularity. We motivate the need to correct general relativity in the study of singularities, and mention the kind of corrections provided by string theory. We review how string theory resolves time-like…
The beautiful scenario of pre-big-bang cosmology is appealling not only because it is more or less derived from string theory, but also because it separates clearly the problem of the initial conditions for the universe from that of high…
The AdS/CFT correspondence is one of the most important discoveries in theoretical physics in recent years. It states that certain quantum mechanical theories can actually be described by classical gravity in one higher dimension, in a…