Related papers: The Trace-Free Einstein Equations and inflation
BICEP2 measurement of primordial tensor modes in CMB suggests that cosmological inflation is due to a slowly rolling inflaton taking trans-Planckian values and provides further experimental evidence for the absence of large $M_{\rm P}$…
Informed by a quantum information perspective, we interpret cosmological expansion of space as growing entanglement between underlying degrees of freedom. In particular, we focus on inflationary cosmology, which, while being a successful…
I try to revive, and possibly reconcile, a debate started a few years ago, about the relative roles of a bare cosmological constant and of a vacuum energy, by taking the attitude to try to get the most from the physics now available as…
We propose a simple modified gravity model without any initial matter fields in terms of several alternative non-Riemannian spacetime volume elements within the metric (second order) formalism. We show how the non-Riemannian…
We discuss the coupled Einstein-Klein-Gordon equations for a complex scalar field with and without a quartic self-interaction in a zero curvature Friedman-Lema\^{\i}tre Universe. The complex scalar field, as well as the metric, is…
Unlike Noether symmetry, a metric independent general conserved current exits for non-minimally coupled scalar-tensor theory of gravity, if the trace of the energy momentum tensor vanishes. Thus, in the context of cosmology, a symmetry…
We show that without introducing additional fields or extra degrees of freedom, a specific higher derivative extension of Einstein's gravity that has only a massless spin-2 excitation in its perturbative spectrum, has an inflationary…
Motivated by brane cosmology we solve the Einstein equations with a time dependent cosmological constant. Assuming that at an early epoch the vacuum energy scales as $1/logt $, we show that the universe passes from a fast growing phase…
After an exhaustive introduction highlighting the strengths and weaknesses of the non-local models proposed so far as ultraviolet completions of the Starobinsky theory, we propose a new nonlocal completion of a general $f(R)$ theory (in the…
Cosmological models with inflation and those with bounce have their own strengths and weaknesses. Here we construct a model in which a phase of bounce is followed by a viable inflationary phase. This incorporates several advantages of both…
A thorough study and analysis on the conceptual foundations of unimodular gravity shows that this theory is essentially general relativity disguised as unimodular relativity in the literature. The main reason for this dilemma is accepting…
A number of recent observations have suggested that the Einstein's theory of general relativity may not be the ultimate theory of gravity. The f(R) gravity model with R being the scalar curvature turns out to be one of the best bet to…
We consider cosmological inflation generated by a scalar field slowly rolling off from a de Sitter maximum of its potential. The models belong to the class of hilltop models and represent the most general model of this kind in which the…
We have investigated inflationary model constructed from minimally modified gravity (MMG) theories. The MMG theory in the form of $f({\bf H}) \propto {\bf H}^{1+p}$ gravity where, ${\bf H}$ is the Hamiltonian constraint in the Einstein…
We study inflation in scalar-tensor perturbative quantum gravity driven by a one-loop effective potential. We consider effective potentials generated by three models. The first model describes a single scalar field with a non-vanishing…
We study the cancelations in the energy estimates for Einstein vacuum equations in order to prove the formation of black holes along evolutions. The novelty of the paper is that, we completely avoid using rotation vector fields to establish…
The leading account of several salient observable features of our universe today is provided by the theory of cosmic inflation. But an important and thus far intractable question is whether inflation is generic, or whether it is finely…
A particular compensation-type solution of the main cosmological constant problem has been proposed recently, with two massless vector fields dynamically canceling an arbitrary cosmological constant \Lambda. The naive expectation is that…
Quantum gravitational effects in loop quantum cosmology lead to a resolution of the initial singularity and have the potential to solve the horizon problem and generate a quasi scale-invariant spectrum of density fluctuations. We consider…
In scale-invariant models of fundamental physics, mass scales are generated by spontaneous symmetry breaking. In this work, we study inflation in scale-invariant $R^2$ gravity, in which the Planck mass is generated by a scalar field, which…