Related papers: What is the shape of the initial state?
As we follow our Universe to early times, we find that matter was crushed to high densities, somewhat similar to the behavior at a black hole singularity. String theory has made progress in explaining the internal structure of black holes,…
In the context of inflation, non-vacuum initial states for cosmological perturbations that possess a built in scale are studied. It is demonstrated that this assumption leads to a falsifiable class of models. The question of whether they…
It is proposed that if quantum states of space-time are coherent on null surfaces, holographic Planck-scale fluctuations of inflationary horizons dominate the formation of primordial scalar curvature perturbations. It is shown that the…
We calculate the bispectrum of primordial curvature perturbations, \zeta, generated during "open inflation." Inflation occurs inside a bubble nucleated via quantum tunneling from the background false vacuum state. Our universe lives inside…
We consider a model of inflation consisting a single fluid with a time-dependent equation of state. In this phenomenological picture, two periods of inflation are separated by an intermediate non-inflationary stage which can be either a…
We give the initial spectrum of quantized gravitational waves in the context of the one-bubble open inflationary universe scenario. In determining the quantum state after the bubble nucleation we adopt the prescription to require the…
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,…
We compute the primordial trispectrum for curvature perturbations produced during cosmic inflation in models with standard kinetic terms, when the initial quantum state is not necessarily the vacuum state. The presence of initial…
We consider the problem of determining the state of a quantum system given one or more readings of the expectation value of an observable. The system is assumed to be a finite dimensional quantum control system for which we can influence…
The statistical properties of the primordial density perturbations has been considered in the past decade as a powerful probe of the physical processes taking place in the early universe. Within the inflationary paradigm, the properties of…
We explore the possibility of a single field quasi-de Sitter inflationary model with general initial state for primordial fluctuations. In this paper, first we compute the power spectrum and the bispectrum of scalar perturbations with…
Positively-curved, oscillatory universes are studied within the context of Loop Quantum Cosmology subject to a consistent semi-classical treatment. The semi-classical effects are reformulated in terms of an effective phantom fluid with a…
After a brief summary of general relativity and cosmology, we present the basic concepts underlying inflation, the currently best motivated models for the early Universe. We describe the simplest inflation models, based on a single scalar…
Modifications of the initial-state of the inflaton field can induce a departure from Gaussianity and leave a testable imprint on the higher order correlations of the CMB and large scale structures in the Universe. We focus on the bispectrum…
The inflationary and pre-inflationary evolution of scalar modes of cosmological perturbations in a closed universe is analyzed for a loop quantum cosmology model with an inflationary regime consistent with the constraints on inflation…
We consider the effects of entanglement in the initial quantum state of scalar and tensor fluctuations during inflation. We allow the gauge-invariant scalar and tensor fluctuations to be entangled in the initial state and compute…
This thesis is dedicated to studying cosmological inflation, which is a period of accelerated expansion in the very early Universe that is required to explain the observed anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background. Inflation, when…
We perform a semi-classical analysis of the Emergent Universe scenario for inflation. Fixing the background, and taking the inflaton to be homogenous, we cast the inflaton's evolution as a one-dimensional quantum mechanics problem. We find…
These lectures are intended to give a pedagogical introduction to the main current picture of the very early universe. After elementary reviews of general relativity and of the standard Big Bang model, the following subjects are discussed:…
Quantum origin of the early inflationary Universe from the no-boundary and tunnelling quantum states is considered in the one-loop approximation of quantum cosmology. A universal effective action algorithm for the distribution function of…