Related papers: The world is discrete
We consider inflation in a universe with a positive cosmological constant and a nonminimally coupled scalar field, in which the field couples both quadratically and quartically to the Ricci scalar. When considered in the Einstein frame and…
We summarize three recent efforts to constrain the first few moments of cosmic creation before and during the epoch of inflation. We consider two means to explain a slight dip in the power spectrum of the cosmic microwave background for…
We consider the coupled evolution of density, (scalar) metric and dilaton perturbations in the transition from a ``stringy" phase of growing curvature and gravitational coupling to the standard radiation-dominated cosmology. We show that…
We give an analytical description of the spatial distribution of domain walls produced during a biased nonequilibrium phase transition in the vacuum state of a light scalar field. We discuss in detail the spectrum of the associated…
We demonstrate the existence of a universal transition from a continuous scale invariant phase to a discrete scale invariant phase for a class of one-dimensional quantum systems with anisotropic scaling symmetry between space and time.…
We find the spectrum P(w)dw of the gravitational wave background produced in the early universe in string theory. We work in the framework of String Driven Cosmology, whose scale factors are computed with the low-energy effective string…
The usual account for the origin of cosmic structure during inflation is not fully satisfactory, as it lacks a physical mechanism capable of generating the inhomogeneity and anisotropy of our Universe, from an exactly homogeneous and…
We have observed damped longitudinal cosmological-scale oscillations in a unique model-independent plot of scale factor against cosmological time for Type Ia supernovae data. We found several first-derivative relative maxima/minima spanning…
Recently, it has been showed that a slow expansion, which is asymptotically a static state in infinite past and may be described as an evolution with \epsilon \ll -1, of early universe may lead to the generation of primordial perturbation…
During cosmic recombination, charged particles bind into neutral atoms and the mean free path of photons rapidly increases, resulting in the familiar diffusion damping of primordial radiation temperature variations. An additional effect is…
We demonstrate that local, scale-dependent non-Gaussianity can generate cosmic variance uncertainty in the observed spectral index of primordial curvature perturbations. In a universe much larger than our current Hubble volume, locally…
In the inflationary scenarios suggested by string theory, the vacuum fluctuations of the electromagnetic field can be amplified by the time-evolution of the dilaton background, and can grow large enough to explain both the origin of the…
Inflation can act as a space-time microscope for Planck or string scale effects, leaving potentially observable traces in the primordial perturbation spectrum. I discuss two frameworks that were used recently to study this phenomenon:…
After a short history of the $\Lambda$-term it is explained why the (effective) cosmological constant is expected to obtain contributions from short-distance-physics, corresponding to an energy scale of at least 100 GeV. The actual tiny…
We compute the spectral distribution of the quantum fluctuations of the vacuum, amplified by inflation, after an arbitrary number of background transitions. Using a graphic representation of the process we find that the final spectrum can…
Fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature are being studied with ever increasing precision. Two competing types of theories might describe the origins of these fluctuations: ``inflation'' and ``defects''. Here we…
We calculate the power spectrum of vacuum fluctuations of a generic scalar field in a quantum cosmological setting that is manifestly singularity-free. The power spectrum is given in terms of the usual scale invariant spectrum plus scale…
Skewness of temperature fluctuations of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) produced by initially Gaussian adiabatic perturbations with the flat (Harrison-Zeldovich) spectrum, which arises due to non-linear corrections to a gravitational…
The new three year WMAP data seem to confirm the presence of non-standard large scale features in the Cosmic Microwave Anisotropies power spectrum. While these features may hint at uncorrected experimental systematics, it is also possible…
In most current models of inflation based on a weakly self-coupled scalar matter field minimally coupled to gravity, the period of inflation lasts so long that, at the beginning of the inflationary period, the physical wavelengths of…