Related papers: Unwinding Inflation
Eternal inflation requires upward fluctuations of the energy in a Hubble volume, which appear to violate the energy conditions. In particular, a scalar field in an inflating spacetime should obey the averaged null energy condition, which…
An outgrowth of the idea of inflation is advanced. In the inflation regime, the singularity condition is broken. Equations which govern inflation are invariant under time reversal, so that they describe deflation as well. Those two…
We consider the brane gas picture of the early universe. At later stages, when there are no winding modes and the background is free to expand, we show that a moving 3-brane, which we identify with our universe, can inflate even though it…
We demonstrate that the initial conditions for inflation are met when D5 and \bar{D}5 branes annihilate. This scenario uses Sen's conjecture that a co-dimension two vortex forms on the worldvolume of the annihilated 5-brane system.…
Our universe may have formed via bubble nucleation in an eternally-inflating background. Furthermore, the background may have a compact dimension--the modulus of which tunnels out of a metastable minimum during bubble nucleation--which…
We derive inflation from M-theory on S^1/Z_2 via the non-perturbative dynamics of N M5-branes. The open membrane instanton interactions between the M5-branes give rise to exponential potentials which are too steep for inflation individually…
I present a brief review of astro-ph/0406099, which argues that there is a limit on the number of efolds of inflation which are observable in a universe which undergoes an eternally accelerated expansion in the future. Such an acceleration…
In a previous paper, two of the authors presented a "regulated" picture of eternal inflation. This picture both suggested and drew support from a conjectured discontinuity in the amplitude for tunneling from positive to negative vacuum…
We present a scenario where brane inflation arises more generically. We start with D3 and anti-D3-branes at the infrared ends of two different throats. This setup is a natural consequence of the assumption that in the beginning we have a…
We present a natural scenario for obtaining an open universe ($\Omega _0<1$) through inflation. In this scenario, there are two epochs of inflationary expansion---an epoch of `old inflation,' during which the inflaton field is stuck in a…
We find a description of hybrid inflation in (3+1)-dimensions using brane dynamics of Hanany-Witten type. P-term inflation/acceleration of the universe with the hybrid potential has a slow-roll de Sitter stage and a waterfall stage which…
Cosmic inflation is the leading theory to explain early Universe history and structure formation. Non-oscillatory inflation is a class of models which can naturally introduce a post-inflationary stiff period of the Universe's evolution…
Brane inflation is a specific realization of the inflationary universe scenario in the early universe within the brane world framework in string theory. The naturalness and robustness of this realistic scenario is explained. Its predictions…
When Inflation is embedded in a fundamental theory, such as string theory, it typically begins when the Universe is already substantially larger than the fundamental scale [such as the one defined by the string length scale]. This is…
We study the possibility of extended inflation in the effective theory of gravity from strings compactified to four dimensions and find that it strongly depends on the mechanism of supersymmetry breaking. We consider a general class of…
We demonstrate an inflationary solution to the cosmological horizon problem during the Hagedorn regime in the early universe. Here the observable universe is confined to three spatial dimensions (a three-brane) embedded in higher…
We demonstrate an inflationary solution to the cosmological horizon problem during the Hagedorn regime in the early universe. Here the observable universe is confined to three spatial dimensions (a three-brane) embedded in higher…
We calculate the power spectrum of adiabatic density perturbations in an open inflationary model in which inflation occurs in two stages. First an epoch of old inflation creates a large, smooth universe, solving the horizon and homogeneity…
We consider the eternal inflation scenario of the slow-roll/chaotic type with the additional element of an objective collapse of the wave function. The incorporation of this new agent to the traditional inflationary setting might represent…
If the cosmological inflationary scenario took place in the cosmic landscape in string theory, the inflaton, the scalar mode responsible for inflation, would have meandered in a complicated multi-dimensional potential. We show that this…