Related papers: Observable effects of anisotropic bubble nucleatio…
We derive the equations governing the dynamics of cosmic strings in a flat anisotropic universe of Bianchi type I and study the evolution of simple cosmic string loop solutions. We show that the anisotropy of the background can have a…
I show that cosmological perturbation spectra produced from quantum fluctuations in massless or self-interacting scalar fields during an inflationary era remain invariant under a two parameter family of transformations of the homogeneous…
The decoherence of quantum fluctuations into classical perturbations during inflation is discussed. A simple quantum mechanical argument, using a spatial particle wavefunction rather than a field description, shows that observable…
Inflation may provide a suitable collider to probe physics at very high energies. In this paper we investigate the impact on the CMB bispectrum of higher spin fields which are long-lived on super-Hubble scales, e.g. partially massless…
An epoch of accelerated expansion, or inflation, in the early universe solves several cosmological problems. While there are many models of inflation only recently has it become possible to discriminate between some of the models using…
Observational Cosmology has indeed made very rapid progress in the past decade. The ability to quantify the universe has largely improved due to observational constraints coming from structure formation Measurements of CMB anisotropy and,…
The universe might experience many cycles with different vacua. The slow-roll inflation may be preceded by kinetic-dominated contraction occurring in "adjacent" vacua during some cycles. In this report we briefly show this phenomenon may…
We study the emergence of anisotropic (Bianchi IX) inflationary universes with no-boundary conditions in the path integral approach to quantum gravity. In contrast to previous work, we find no evidence for any limit to how large the…
We reconsider the observed CMB dipolar asymmetry in the context of open inflation, where a supercurvature mode might survive the bubble nucleation. If such a supercurvature mode modulates the amplitude of the curvature power spectrum, it…
Inflation creates large-scale cosmological density perturbations that are characterized by an isotropic, homogeneous, and Gaussian random distribution about a locally flat background. Even in a flat universe, the spatial curvature measured…
The blackbody radiation left over from the Big Bang has been transformed by the expansion of the Universe into the nearly isotropic 2.73K Cosmic Microwave Background. Tiny inhomogeneities in the early Universe left their imprint on the…
Usually, we assume that there is no inhomogeneity isotropic in terms of our location in the universe. This assumption has not been observationally confirmed yet in sufficient accuracy and we need to consider a method to restrict isotropic…
Models of cosmic inflation suggest that our universe underwent an early phase of accelerated expansion, driven by the dynamics of one or more scalar fields. Inflationary models make specific, quantitative predictions for several observable…
We present a new model for the formation of spherically symmetric clusters in an expanding Universe. Both the Universe and the collapsing cluster are governed by the same pressure less fluid equations for which a uniform initial density…
In principle, the tensor metric (gravity-wave) perturbations that arise in inflationary models can, beyond probing the underlying inflationary model, provide information about the Universe: ionization history, presence of a cosmological…
If the waterfall field of hybrid inflation couples to a U(1) gauge field, the waterfall can generate a statistically anisotropic contribution to the curvature perturbation. We investigate this possibility, generalising in several directions…
Multiple axions form a landscape in the presence of various shift symmetry breaking terms. Eternal inflation populates the axion landscape, continuously creating new universes by bubble nucleation. Slow-roll inflation takes place after the…
I discuss the possibility of using a massive vector field to generate the density perturbation in the Universe. I find that a scale-invariant superhorizon spectrum of vector field perturbations is possible to generate during inflation. The…
Recent data suggest that the Universe could be positively curved. Combined with an inflationary stage, this might lead to a curvature bounce instead of the Big Bang. The background evolution is presented, as a function of the parameters…
We present a mechanism for the origin of the large-scale curvature perturbation in our Universe by the late decay of a massive scalar field, the curvaton. The curvaton is light during a period of cosmological inflation, when it acquires a…