Related papers: Predicting a Prior for Planck
In the last few decades, advances in observational cosmology have given us a standard model of cosmology. We know the content of the universe to within a few percent. With more ambitious experiments on the way, we hope to move beyond the…
It is well known that in manifestly Lorentz invariant theories with nontrivial kinetic terms, perturbations around some classical backgrounds can travel faster than light. These exotic "supersonic" models may have interesting consequences…
Particle phase transitions in the early universe including electroweak and grand unification ones are well-studied subjects. We point out that there are new possible particle phase transitions around inflation. Those new inflationary…
A stiff matter-dominated universe modeled by a free massless scalar field minimally coupled to gravity in a Friedmann-Lema\^{\i}tre-Robertson-Walker (FLRW) geometry is quantized. Generalized complex-width gaussian superpositions of the…
In the primordial universe, fields with mass much larger than the mass-scale of the event-horizon (such as the Hubble parameter in inflation) exist ubiquitously, and can be excited from time to time and oscillate quickly around their…
We discuss the phenomenology of recently proposed holographic models of inflation, in which the very early universe is non-geometric and is described by a dual three-dimensional quantum field theory (QFT). We analyze models determined by a…
Future Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) experiments will deliver extremely accurate measurements of the E-modes pattern of the CMB polarization field. Given the sharpness of the E-modes transfer functions, such surveys make for a powerful…
A thermal gravitational wave background can be produced in the early Universe if a radiation dominated epoch precedes the usual inflationary stage. This background provides a unique way to study the initial state of the Universe. We discuss…
It is investigated if predictions of the inflationary scenario regarding spectra of scalar and tensor perturbations generated from quantum vacuum fluctuations are robust with respect to a modification of the dispersion law for frequencies…
The prediction of a nearly scale-invariant spectrum of curvature and tensor fluctuations is among the main features of cosmic inflation. The current measurements of the primordial fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background (CMB)…
Inflation is an early period of accelerated cosmic expansion, thought to be sourced by high energy physics. A key task today is to use the influx of increasingly precise observational data to constrain the plethora of inflationary models…
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…
Inflation provides a unified paradigm for understanding the isotropy of the cosmic microwave background (CMB), the flatness problem, and the origin of large-scale structure. Although the physics responsible for inflation is not yet well…
The upcoming satellite missions MAP and Planck will measure the spectrum of fluctuations in the Cosmic Microwave Background with unprecedented accuracy. We discuss the prospect of using these observations to distinguish among proposed…
We summarize the utility of precise cosmic microwave background (CMB) polarization measurements as probes of the physics of inflation. We focus on the prospects for using CMB measurements to differentiate various inflationary mechanisms. In…
Recent debates around the testability of the inflationary paradigm raise the question of how to model-independently discriminate it from competing scenarios. We argue that a detection of the Cosmic Graviton Background (CGB), the relic…
We consider observational limits on a proposed model of the string landscape in inflation. In this scenario, effects from the decoherence of entangled quantum states in long-wavelength modes in the universe result in modifications to the…
We study small field models of inflation, which, against previous expectations, yield significant Gravitational Wave (GW) signal while reproducing other measured observable quantities in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). We numerically…
Bouncing models of cosmology, as they arise e.g. in loop quantum cosmology, can be followed by an inflationary phase and generate close-to-scale-invariant fluctuation spectra as observed in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). However,…
In forthcoming years, connections between cosmology and particle physics will be made increasingly important with the advent of a new generation of cosmic microwave background (CMB) experiments. Here, we review a number of these links. Our…