Related papers: Escaping the crunch: gravitational effects in clas…
We discuss a novel scenario for early cosmology, when the inflationary quasi-de Sitter phase dynamically originates from the initial quantum state represented by the microcanonical density matrix. This genuine quantum effect occurs as a…
Questioning the experimental basis of continuous descriptions of fundamental interactions we discuss classical gravity as an effective continuous first-order approximation of a discrete interaction. The sub-dominant contributions produce a…
Detailed measurements of the cosmic microwave background indicate the large-scale homogeneity of the universe. On very small scales, we observe however inhomogeneities such as galaxies, stars, planets and ourselves. In the context of hot…
The origin of cosmic structure is widely regarded as quantum, yet the Universe today appears classical. Standard lore attributes this to a "quantum-to-classical" transition on super-horizon scales during inflation. Gravity plays a central…
By quantising the background as well as the perturbations in a simple one fluid model, we show that there exists an ambiguity in the choice of relevant variables, potentially leading to incompatible observational physical predictions. In a…
We show that the vacuum energy of a free quantized field of very low mass can significantly alter the recent expansion of the universe. The effective action of the theory is obtained from a non-perturbative sum of scalar curvature terms in…
We investigate if the observed small and nearly scale-invariant primordial cosmic perturbation, i.e. the perturbation amplitude $P_\zeta\sim10^{-9}$ and the spectral index $n_s \simeq 0.965$, is typical in the landscape of vacua after…
We set forth a new type of phase transition that might take place in gravitational theories whenever higher-curvature corrections are considered. It can be regarded as a sophisticated version of the Hawking-Page transition, mediated by the…
Previously defined covariant and gauge-invariant perturbation variables, representing, e.g., the fractional spatial energy density gradient on hypersurfaces of constant expansion, are used to simplify the linear perturbation analysis of a…
In this paper the possibility of generating large scale curvature perturbations induced from the entropic perturbations during the waterfall phase transition of standard hybrid inflation model is studied. We show that whether or not…
If the spatial curvature of the universe is positive, then the curvature term will always dominate at early enough times in a slow-rolling inflationary epoch. This enhances inflationary effects and hence puts limits on the possible number…
We investigate the parameter space of hybrid inflation models where inflation terminates via a first-order phase transition causing nucleation of bubbles. Such models experience a tension from the need to ensure nearly scale invariant…
Quantum diffusion describes the inflow of vacuum quantum fluctuations as they get amplified by gravitational instability, and stretched to large distances during inflation. In this picture, the dynamics of the universe's expansion becomes…
We propose a new scenario for early cosmology, where an inflationary de Sitter phase is obtained with a ghost condensate. The transition to radiation dominance is triggered by the ghost itself, without any slow-roll potential. Density…
For the first time, we investigate the non-perturbative dynamics of single field inflation with a departure from slow-roll. Using simulations, we find that oscillatory features in the potential can drastically alter the course of inflation,…
When electric-type flux threads compact extra dimensions, a quantum nucleation event can break a flux line and initiate a cascade that unwinds many units of flux. Here, we present a novel mechanism for inflation based on this phenomenon.…
A semiclassical description of quantum systems is applied to probe the dynamics of the cosmological model of an inflationary universe with quadratic inflaton potential, described in a quantum framework of geometrodynamics. The systematic…
We consider the presence and evolution of primordial density perturbations in a cosmological model based on a simple ansatz which captures -- by providing a set of effective gravitational field equations -- the strength of the enhanced…
What if gravity is classical? If true, a consistent co-existence of classical gravity and quantum matter requires that gravity exhibit irreducible fluctuations. These fluctuations can mediate classical correlations, but not quantum…
We present an inflationary universe model which utilizes two coupled real scalar fields. The inflation field $\phi$ experiences a first order phase transition and its potential dominates the energy density of the Universe during the…