Related papers: Ekpyrotic loop quantum cosmology
Using the covariant formalism, we derive the equations of motion for adiabatic and entropy perturbations at third order in perturbation theory for cosmological models involving two scalar fields. We use these equations to calculate the…
We propose a mechanism to generate a nearly scale-invariant spectrum of adiabatic scalar perturbations about a stable, ekpyrotic background. The key ingredient is a coupling between a single ekpyrotic field and a perfect fluid of…
Isotropic models in loop quantum cosmology allow explicit calculations, thanks largely to a completely known volume spectrum, which is exploited in order to write down the evolution equation in a discrete internal time. Because of genuinely…
Within the framework of loop quantum cosmology, there exists a semi-classical regime where spacetime may be approximated in terms of a continuous manifold, but where the standard Friedmann equations of classical Einstein gravity receive…
We confront various nonsingular bouncing cosmologies with the recently released BICEP2 data and investigate the observational constraints on their parameter space. In particular, within the context of the effective field approach, we…
In the matter bounce scenario, a dust-dominated contracting space-time generates scale-invariant perturbations that, assuming a nonsingular bouncing cosmology, propagate to the expanding branch and set appropriate initial conditions for the…
At low energy, the four-dimensional effective action of the ekpyrotic model of the universe is equivalent to a slightly modified version of the pre big bang model. We discuss cosmological perturbations in these models. In particular we…
We consider a simple model of cosmological collapse driven by canonical fields with exponential potentials. We generalise the two-field ekpyrotic collapse to consider non-orthogonal or tilted potentials and give the general condition for…
We study a contracting universe composed of cold dark matter and radiation, and with a positive cosmological constant. As is well known from standard cosmological perturbation theory, under the assumption of initial quantum vacuum…
Some long standing issues concerning the quantum nature of the big bang are resolved in the context of homogeneous isotropic models with a scalar field. Specifically, the known results on the resolution of the big bang singularity in loop…
Cosmological perturbations are generally described by quantum fields on (curved but) classical space-times. While this strategy has a large domain of validity, it can not be justified in the quantum gravity era where curvature and matter…
Alternative scenarios to the Big Bang singularity have been subject of intense research for several decades by now. Most popular in this sense have been frameworks were such singularity is replaced by a bounce around some minimal…
We revisit the quantum theory of a massive, minimally coupled scalar field, propagating on the Planck-era isotropic cosmological quantum spacetime which transitions to a classical spacetime in later times. The quantum effects modify the…
The closed, k=1, FRW model coupled to a massless scalar field is investigated in the framework of loop quantum cosmology using analytical and numerical methods. As in the k=0 case, the scalar field can be again used as emergent time to…
We investigate the emergence of a quantum Big-Bounce in the context of an isotropic Universe, filled by a self-interacting scalar field, which plays the role of a physical clock. The bouncing cosmology is the result of a scattering process,…
Quantum decoherence and the transition to semiclassical behavior during inflation has been extensively considered in the literature. In this paper, we use a simple model to analyze the same process in ekpyrosis. Our result is that the…
Loop quantum cosmology (LQC) predicts a nonsingular evolution of the universe through a bounce in the high energy region. But LQC has an ambiguity about the quantization scheme. Recently, the authors in [Phys. Rev. D 77, 124008 (2008)]…
A Quintom universe with an equation-of-state crossing the cosmological constant boundary can provide a bouncing solution dubbed the Quintom Bounce and thus resolve the Big Bang singularity. In this paper, we investigate the cosmological…
We study the cosmology of a Lee-Wick type scalar field theory. First, we consider homogeneous and isotropic background solutions and find that they are nonsingular, leading to cosmological bounces. Next, we analyze the spectrum of…
We study the quantum circuit complexity of cosmological perturbations in different models of the early universe. A natural measure for the complexity of cosmological perturbations is based on the symplectic group, allowing us to identify…