Related papers: Statistical Anisotropy from Anisotropic Inflation
We show that in theories of gravity that add quadratic curvature invariants to the Einstein-Hilbert action there exist expanding vacuum cosmologies with positive cosmological constant which do not approach the de Sitter universe. Exact…
The standard model of cosmology is based on the hot Big Bang theory and the inflationary paradigm. Recent precise observations of the temperature and polarization anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background and the matter distribution…
Observational tests during the next decade may determine if the evolution of the Universe can be understood from fundamental physical principles, or if special initial conditions, coincidences, and new, untestable physical laws must be…
We discuss ability of the harmonic pattern of peaks in the CMB angular power spectrum to test inflation. By studying robust features of alternate models, which must all be isocurvature in nature, we reveal signatures unique to inflation.…
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…
There is strong evidence from cosmological data that the universe underwent an epoch of superluminal expansion called inflation. A satisfactory embedding of inflation in fundamental physics has been an outstanding problem at the interface…
We generalize the treatment of inflationary perturbations to deal with the non-Markovian colored noise emerging from any realistic approach to stochastic inflation. We provide a calculation of the power-spectrum of the gauge-invariant…
I discuss the interplay between inflation and microwave background anisotropies, stressing in particular the accuracy with which inflation predictions need to be made, and the importance of inflation as an underlying paradigm for…
In inflation cosmologies, cosmic structure develops through the gravitational instability of the inevitable quantum noise in primordial scalar fields. I show how the acceleration of the universe defines the shape of the primordial spectrum…
Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) anisotropies that result from quantum fluctuations during inflation are explored and the impact of their ``cosmic variance'' on the ability to use existing data to probe inflationary models is studied. We…
We study an inflationary scenario with a two-form field to which an inflaton couples non-trivially. First, we show that anisotropic inflation can be realized as an attractor solution and that the two-form hair remains during inflation. A…
Fluctuations in the intensity and polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) and the large-scale distribution of matter in the universe each contain clues about the nature of the earliest moments of time. The next generation of…
This thesis is centered on three main subjects within the theory of inflation and cosmological perturbations: loop corrections to the power spectrum of curvature fluctuations generated during inflation; evolution of cosmological…
We consider an alternative scenario of inflation which can account for a spatially open universe. It is similar to the old inflation in which the bubble nucleation occurs in the sea of false vacuum, but differs from it in that the second…
The early stages of the universe evolution are discussed according to the hot big bang model and the grand unified theories. The shortcomings of big bang are summarized and their resolution by inflationary cosmology is sketched.…
Recently, the Planck 2013 results showed possible evidence for a dipolar power modulation of the CMB temperature fluctuations at low--(\ell) multipoles. This anomaly might imply certain deviations from statistical isotropy. To incorporate…
In the model of solid / elastic inflation, inflation is driven by a source that has the field theoretical description of a solid. To allow for prolonged slow roll inflation, the solid needs to be extremely insensitive to the spatial…
The Cosmic no hair theorem is studied in anisotropic Bianchi brane models which admit power law inflation with a scalar field. We note that all Bianchi models except Bianchi type IX transit to an inflationary regime and the anisotropy…
The existence of large-scale anisotropy can not be ruled out by the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation. Over the years, several models have been proposed in the context of anisotropic inflation to account for CMB's cold spot and…
We emphasize that the estimation of cosmological parameters from cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropy data, such as the recent high resolution maps from BOOMERanG and MAXIMA-1, requires assumptions about the primordial spectra. The…