Related papers: Escaping the crunch: gravitational effects in clas…
In the standard inflationary paradigm, cosmological density perturbations are generated as quantum fluctuations in the early Universe, but then undergo a quantum-to-classical transition. A key role in this transition is played by squeezing…
We investigate the statistical equilibrium properties of a system of classical particles interacting via Newtonian gravity, enclosed in a three-dimensional spherical volume. Within a mean-field approximation, we derive an equation for the…
We obtain effective equations of inflationary dynamics for the mean inflaton and metric fields in the no-boundary and tunneling quantum states of the Universe. In the slow roll approximation (taking the form of the local Schwiger-DeWitt…
A model of inflation is proposed in which compact extra dimensions allow a graceful exit without recourse to flat potentials or super-Planckian field values. Though bubbles of true vacuum are too sparse to uniformly reheat the Universe by…
Vacuum energy, a prediction of quantum field theory, manifests itself as a cosmological constant in general relativity. In this Letter, we propose a novel inflationary scenario driven by a bare cosmological constant $\Lambda$, which…
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…
The theory of cosmological perturbations has become a cornerstone of modern quantitative cosmology since it is the framework which provides the link between the models of the very early Universe such as the inflationary Universe scenario…
We analyze quantum-mechanical counterpart of Newtonian cosmology and show that effects of zero-point motion eliminate classical density singularity. Quantum effects are particularly significant for closed Universes where without the…
In hep-th/0506040 we discussed a classically constrained model of gravity. This theory contains known solutions of General Relativity (GR), and admits solutions that are absent in GR. Here we study cosmological implications of some of these…
We show that nonperturbative vacuum effects can produce a vacuum-driven transition from a matter-dominated universe to one in which the effective equation of state is that of radiation plus cosmological constant. The actual material content…
We study "vacuum crossing", which occurs when the vacua of a theory are exchanged as we vary some periodic parameter $\theta$ in a closed loop. We show that vacuum crossing is a useful non-perturbative tool to study strongly-coupled quantum…
We show that the geometry of cutoffs on eternal inflation strongly constrains predictions for the timescales of vacuum domination, curvature domination, and observation. We consider three measure proposals: the causal patch, the fat…
Inflationary perturbations are quantum in origin. Yet, when computing cosmological observables, they are often treated as classical stochastic fields. Do they nevertheless retain quantum birthmarks? A hallmark of genuinely quantum behaviour…
We perform a detailed investigation of the simplest possible cosmological model in which a bounce can occur, namely that where the dynamics is led by a simple massive scalar field in a general self-interacting potential and a background…
We investigate a conformal invariant gravitational model which is taken to hold at pre-inflationary era. The conformal invariance allows to make a dynamical distinction between the two unit systems (or conformal frames) usually used in…
We introduce a novel correlation, $n_s$ - $\Delta N$, connecting CMB parameters to the required total e-folds for eternal inflation. This correlation provides a robust tool for evaluating eternal (string) inflation models using CMB data and…
Methods and concepts for the study of phase transitions mediated by a time-dependent order-parameter field in curved spacetimes are discussed. A practical example is the derivation of an effective (quasi-)potential for the description of…
We consider a cosmological model with bulk viscosity ($\eta$) and variable cosmological $(\Lambda\propto \rho^{-\alpha}, \alpha=\rm const.$) and gravitational ($G$) constants. The model exhibits many interesting cosmological features.…
Energy transfers in collisions between classical clusters are studied with Classical N Body Dynamics calculations for different entrance channels. It is shown that the energy per particle transferred to thermalised classical clusters does…
We analyze vacuum tunneling in quantum field theory in a general formalism by using the Wigner representation. In the standard instanton formalism, one usually approximates the initial false vacuum state by an eigenstate of the field…