Related papers: Before the Bang
Recent developments in cosmology suggest that much of the universe is in a state of explosive, accelerated expansion, called inflation. We live in a "bubble" where inflation has ended, and other bubbles with diverse properties are…
Quantum geometry predicts that a universe evolves through an inflationary phase at small volume before exiting gracefully into a standard Friedmann phase. This does not require the introduction of additional matter fields with ad hoc…
The quantum fluctuations of a homogeneous, isotropic, open pre-big bang model are discussed. By solving exactly the equations for tensor and scalar perturbations we find that particle production is negligible during the perturbative Pre-Big…
This is a pedagogical introduction to early cosmology and the host of fundamental physics involved in it (particle physics, grand unification and general relativity). Inflation and the inflaton field are the central theme of this review.…
We propose a scenario of the beginning of inflation in which the non-vacuum value of the scalar field that drives inflation develops dynamically due to the non-minimal coupling to gravity. In this scenario, inflation emerges as an…
The evolution of a scalar field is explored taking into account the presence of a background fluid in a positively curved Universe in the framework of loop quantum cosmology. Though the mechanism that provides the initial conditions for…
According to the theory of cosmic inflation, the large scale structures observed in our Universe (galaxies, clusters of galaxies, Cosmic Background Microwave - CMB - anisotropy ...) are of quantum mechanical origin. They are nothing but…
The purpose of these lectures is to give a pedagogical introduction to inflation and the production of primordial perturbations, as well as a review of some of the latest developments in this domain. After a short introduction, we review…
We study the inflationary dynamics in Brane World gravity and look for observational signatures of any deviation from the standard General Relativity based results of Cosmological Perturbation Theory. We first review the standard paradigm…
We formulate the basic postulate of pre-big bang cosmology as one of ``asymptotic past triviality'', by which we mean that the initial state is a generic perturbative solution of the tree-level low-energy effective action. Such a…
The large-scale power deficit in the cosmic microwave background fluctuations might be relevant with the physics of pre-inflation, a bounce, or a superinflationary phase preceding slow-roll inflation, which can provide a singular-free…
We review some perturbative results obtained in quantum gravity in an accelerating cosmological background. We then describe a class of non-local, purely gravitational models which have the correct structure to reproduce the leading…
Current cosmological models require the universe to be in a very smooth initial state before the onset of inflation, a situation to which Penrose ascribes a vanishingly small probability, leading to his proposal of a Conformal Cyclic…
We discuss the potential cosmological role of gravitational wave astronomy as a probe of the very early universe. The next generation of detectors - now in production - may be able to observe a stochastic background of gravitational waves…
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 a pedagogical review of elementary cosmology, I go on to discuss some obstacles to obtaining inflationary or accelerating universes in M/String Theory. In particular, I give an account of an old No-Go Theorem to this effect. I then…
We investigate a nonsingular initial state of the Universe which leads to inflation naturally. The model is described by a scalar field with a quadratic potential in Eddington-inspired Born-Infeld gravity. The curvature of this initial…
When did the universe thermalize? In this talk I review the status of this issue and its importance in establishing the expected properties of dark matter, the growth of large-scale structure, and the viability of inflation models when…
The inflationary paradigm is an important cornerstone of the concordance cosmological model. However, standard inflation cannot fully address the transition from an early homogeneous and isotropic stage, to another one lacking such…
We conduct a (pre-)inflationary dynamics study within the framework of a simple noncommutative extension of effective loop quantum cosmology -- put forward recently by the authors -- which preserves its key features (in particular, the…