Related papers: The world is discrete
We interpret cosmological evolution holographically as a renormalisation group flow in a dual Euclidean field theory, as suggested by the conjectured dS/CFT correspondence. Inflation is described by perturbing around the infra-red fixed…
We review a cosmology in which particles are fluctuationally created from a background Zero Point Field. This cosmology is consistent with recent observations of an ever expanding and accelerating universe, as also the recently confirmed…
We identify a new mechanism in supergravity theories which leads to successful inflation without any need for fine tuning. The simplest model yields a spectrum of density fluctuations tilted away from scale-invariance and negligible…
In this paper we show that, within the framework of the QSSC, the small scale deviations on angular scales $\lesssim 1^{0}$ expected in the MBR are due to inhomogeneities in the distribution of galaxies and clusters. It is shown how these…
If the Universe has the topology of a 3-torus ($T^3$), then it follows from recent data on large-scale temperature fluctuations $\Delta T/T$ of the cosmic microwave background that either the minimal size of the torus is at least of the…
It was recently proposed that five-dimensional inflation can relate the causal size of the observable universe to the present weakness of gravitational interactions by blowing up an extra compact dimension from the microscopic fundamental…
The shift-symmetric coupling of a pseudo-scalar particle driving inflation to gauge fields provides a unique way of probing cosmic inflation. We show for an SU(2) gauge group how a classical isotropic background gauge field develops from…
We propose a new alternative mechanism to seed a scale invariant spectrum of primordial density perturbations that does not rely on inflation. In our scenario, a perfect fluid dominates the early stages of an expanding, non-inflating…
The small-scale crisis, discrepancies between observations and N-body simulations, may imply suppressed matter fluctuations on subgalactic distance scales. Such a suppression could be caused by some early-universe mechanism (e.g., broken…
In the standard cosmological model, the temperature anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background is interpreted as variation in the gravitational potential at the point of emission, due to the emitter being embedded in a region ${\cal C}$…
Statistical isotropy of primordial perturbations is a common assumption in cosmology, but it is an assumption that should be tested. To this end, we develop cosmic microwave background statistics for a primordial power spectrum that depends…
For a certain type of modified dispersion relations, the vacuum quantum state for very short wavelength cosmological perturbations is scale-invariant and it has been suggested that this may be the source of the scale-invariance observed in…
A large bulk flow, which is in tension with the Lambda Cold Dark Matter ($\Lambda$CDM) cosmological model, has been observed. In this paper, we provide a physically plausible explanation of this bulk flow, based on the assumption that some…
Gravity is a non-linear theory, and hence, barring cancellations, the initial super-horizon perturbations produced by inflation must contain some minimum amount of mode coupling, or primordial non-Gaussianity. In single-field slow-roll…
We expose the scenarios of primordial baryon-photon plasma evolution within the framework of the Milne-like universe models. Recently, such models find a second wind and promise an inflation-free solution of a lot of cosmological puzzles…
We show that the dimension of spacetime becomes complex-valued when its short-scale geometry is invariant under a discrete scaling symmetry. This characteristic can generically arise in quantum gravities, for instance, in those based on…
Approximate de Sitter symmetry of inflating Universe is responsible for the approximate flatness of the power spectrum of scalar perturbations. However, this is not the only option. Another symmetry which can explain nearly scale-invariant…
Following a self-contained review of the basics of the theory of cosmological perturbations, we discuss why the conclusions reached in the recent paper by Kaloper et al are too pessimistic estimates of the amplitude of possible imprints of…
We study the statistical properties of spherical harmonic modes of temperature maps of the cosmic microwave background. Unlike other studies, which focus mainly on properties of the amplitudes of these modes, we look instead at their…
We study the role of domain walls and their relics in the very early Universe within the framework of the mode-matching technique. Domain walls formed during the spontaneous breaking of discrete symmetries are modelled as a short lived…