Related papers: Observing the Dimensionality of Our Parent Vacuum
Recent measurements of the Cosmic Microwave Background Anisotropy have provided evidence for the presence of oscillations in the angular power spectrum. These oscillations are a wonderful confirmation of the standard cosmological scenario…
An anthropic understanding of the cosmological constant requires that the vacuum energy at late time scans from one patch of the universe to another. If the vacuum energy during inflation also scans, the various patches of the universe…
Gravitational lensing, caused by matter perturbations along the line-of-sight to the last scattering surface, can modify the shape of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropy power spectrum. We discuss the detectability of lensing…
Theoretical considerations motivate us to consider vacuum energy to be able to decay and to assume that the spatial geometry of the universe is closed. Combining both aspects leads to the possibility that the universe, or certain regions…
Recent late-Universe observations suggest an open Universe. If confirmed, such a departure from spatial flatness would carry profound implications for our understanding of cosmic inflation and the ultimate fate of the Universe. Motivated by…
The detection of a time variation of the angle between two distant sources would reveal an anisotropic expansion of the Universe. We study this effect of "cosmic parallax" within the "ellipsoidal universe" model, namely a particular…
This article describes the theory of cosmological perturbations around a homogeneous and anisotropic universe of the Bianchi I type. Starting from a general parameterisation of the perturbed spacetime a la Bardeen, a complete set of gauge…
Cosmological phase transitions are thought to have taken place at the early Universe imprinting their properties on the observable Universe. There is strong evidence that, through the dynamics of a scalar field that lead a second order…
We analyze observational signatures arising from an epoch in cosmology corresponding to the simple harmonic universe, which consists of positive curvature, a negative cosmological constant, and one or more exotic matter sources with $-1 < w…
The observed structures in the universe are thought to have arisen from gravitational instability acting on small fluctuations generated in the early universe. These spatial fluctuations are imprinted on the CMBR as angular anisotropies.…
We show that the dimension of spacetime becomes complex-valued when its short-scale geometry is invariant under a discrete scaling symmetry. This characteristic can generically arise in quantum gravities, for instance, in those based on…
It is well known that processes of first order phase transitions may have occurred in the inflationary era. If one or more occurred well before the end of inflation, the nucleated bubbles are stretched to large scales and the primordial…
If the Universe is open, scales larger than the curvature scale may be probed by large-angle fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background (CMB). We consider primordial adiabatic perturbations and discuss power spectra that are power laws…
Inflation generates gravitational waves, which may be observable in the low multipoles of the cosmic microwave background (cmb) anisotropy but only if the inflaton field variation is at least of order the Planck scale. Such a large…
Noncommutative geometry can provide effective description of physics at very short distances taking into account generic effects of quantum gravity. Inflation amplifies tiny quantum fluctuations in the early universe to macroscopic scales…
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…
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…
We study the cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropy in the scenario where the baryon asymmetry of the universe is generated from a condensation of a scalar field. In such a scenario, the scalar condensation may acquire fluctuation…
Perhaps the deepest mystery of our accelerating Universe in expansion is the existence of a tiny and rigid cosmological constant, $\Lambda$. Its size is many orders of magnitude below the expected one in the standard model of particle…
We discuss the time dependence and future of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) in the context of the standard cosmological model, in which we are now entering a state of endless accelerated expansion. The mean temperature will simply…