Related papers: Inflation and Loop Quantum Cosmology
We find that general relativity can be naturally free of cosmological singularities. Several nonsingular models are currently available that either assume ad hoc matter contents, or are nonsingular only over a sector of solution space of…
The very early universe provides the best arena we currently have to test quantum gravity theories. The success of the inflationary paradigm in accounting for the observed inhomogeneities in the cosmic microwave background already…
Inflationary cosmology attempts to provide a natural explanation for the flatness and homogeneity of the observable universe. In the context of reversible (unitary) evolution, this goal is difficult to satisfy, as Liouville's theorem…
The Planck collaboration has provided us rich information about the early universe, and a host of new observational missions will soon shed further light on the `anomalies' that appear to exist on the largest angular scales. From a quantum…
In this talk we discuss three different issues. First of all, there exist several proposals how to solve cosmological problems by adiabatic expansion of the Universe, without any use of inflation. We explain why these models do not solve…
Cosmic inflation is envisioned as the ``most likely'' start for the observed universe. To give substance to this claim, a framework is needed in which inflation can compete with other scenarios and the relative likelihood of all scenarios…
Inflation is a promising solution to many problems of the standard Big-Bang cosmology. Nevertheless, inflationary models have proved less compelling. In this chapter, we discuss why supersymmetry has led to more natural models of inflation.…
In loop quantum cosmology (LQC), the initial singularity is replaced by a quantum bounce, leading to a universal post-bounce evolution characterized by three distinct epochs: bouncing, transition, and slow-roll inflation, before the hot…
Recently Hollands and Wald argued that inflation does not solve any of the major cosmological problems. We explain why we disagree with their arguments. They also proposed a new speculative mechanism of generation of density perturbations.…
This thesis is dedicated to analysing the generation and destruction of quantum correlations in the context of inflationary cosmology and an experiment of 'analogue' preheating. Inflation is a phase of accelerated expansion of the Universe,…
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…
We review some recent progress in the extraction of inflationary observables in loop quantum cosmology. Inverse-volume quantum corrections induce a growth of power in the large-scale cosmological spectra and are constrained by observations.
This contribution consists of two parts. In the first part, I review the tunneling approach to quantum cosmology and comment on the alternative approaches. In the second part, I discuss the relation between quantum cosmology and eternal…
Loop quantum cosmology is an application of recent developments for a non-perturbative and background independent quantization of gravity to a cosmological setting. Characteristic properties of the quantization such as discreteness of…
Loop Quantum Gravity is a background independent, nonperturbative approach to the quantization of General Relativity. Its application to models of interest in cosmology and astrophysics, known as Loop Quantum Cosmology, has led to new and…
Loop quantum cosmology applies techniques derived for a background independent quantization of general relativity to cosmological situations and draws conclusions for the very early universe. Direct implications for the singularity problem…
Cosmological perturbations generated during inflation exhibit striking quantum features, including entanglement and high circuit complexity. Yet their observational signatures remain effectively indistinguishable from classical stochastic…
Loop quantum cosmology allows to replace the original singularity by a quantum bounce followed by a phase of fast expansion called super-inflation. In this paper, we use a simple analytic description of super-inflation using the equation of…
Aspects of the full theory of loop quantum gravity can be studied in a simpler context by reducing to symmetric models like cosmological ones. This leads to several applications where loop effects play a significant role when one is…
We propose a method to extract predictions from quantum cosmology for inflation that can be confronted with observations. Employing the tunneling boundary condition in quantum geometrodynamics, we derive a probability distribution for the…