Related papers: Modeling Quantum Gravity Effects in Inflation
Quantum effects play an essential role in modern cosmology. Perhaps the most striking example comes from large-scale structures, generally assumed to originate from vacuum quantum fluctuations and stretched by an expansion phase. Inflation…
In this paper the focus is on inflationary dynamics in the context of Einstein Gauss-Bonnet gravitational theories. We investigate the implications of the slow-roll condition on the slow-roll indices and we investigate how the inflationary…
We go a step further in the search for a consistent and realistic supergravity model of large-field inflation by building a class of models with the following features: during slow-roll, all the scalar fields other than the inflaton are…
One common approach for cosmic inflation consists in couple Einstein's gravity with a scalar field, often referred to inflaton field. In order to derive analytic simple scenarios, we usually work in the {\it slow-roll} regime. In such an…
Using a Liouville measure, similar to the one proposed recently by Gibbons and Turok, we investigate the probability that single-field inflation with a polynomial potential can last long enough to solve the shortcomings of the standard hot…
Quantum gravitational back-reaction offers the potential of simultaneously resolving the problem of the cosmological constant and providing a natural model of inflation in which scalars play no special role. In this model inflation begins…
We show that D-dimensional de Sitter space is unstable to the nucleation of non-singular geometries containing spacetime regions with different numbers of macroscopic dimensions, leading to a dynamical mechanism of compactification. These…
A stiff matter-dominated universe modeled by a free massless scalar field minimally coupled to gravity in a Friedmann-Lema\^{\i}tre-Robertson-Walker (FLRW) geometry is quantized. Generalized complex-width gaussian superpositions of the…
We propose a class of scalar models that, once coupled to gravity, lead to cosmologies that smoothly and stably connect an inflationary quasi-de Sitter universe to a low, or even zero-curvature, maximally symmetric spacetime in the…
We discuss a novel scenario for early cosmology, when the inflationary quasi-de Sitter phase dynamically originates from the initial quantum state represented by the microcanonical density matrix. This genuine quantum effect occurs as a…
We consider the semi-classical dynamics of a free massive scalar field in a homogeneous and isotropic cosmological spacetime. The scalar field is quantized using the polymer quantization method assuming that it is described by a gaussian…
The one-loop effective action for non-minimal scalar modified gravity on de Sitter background with a constant scalar field is found. The corresponding induced cosmological constant is evaluated. It is shown that quantum effects in…
Methods and concepts for the study of phase transitions mediated by a time-dependent order-parameter field in curved spacetimes are discussed. A practical example is the derivation of an effective (quasi-)potential for the description of…
We study the effective field theory of inflation, i.e. the most general theory describing the fluctuations around a quasi de Sitter background, in the case of single field models. The scalar mode can be eaten by the metric by going to…
We study the generation of primordial perturbations in a (single-field) slow-roll inflationary universe. In momentum space, these (Gaussian) perturbations are characterized by a zero mean and a non-zero variance $\Delta^2(k, t)$. However,…
In this paper we investigate the inflationary dynamics of an $f(R)$ gravity in the presence of a canonical scalar field. We specifically choose the cosmological evolution to be a quasi-de Sitter evolution and also the $f(R)$ gravity is…
For simple inflationary models, we provide a consistent and complete scheme by which the macro-physical details of early universe inflation may be determined explicitly from the underlying micro-physical theory. We examine inflationary…
It is sometimes argued that observation of tensor modes from inflation would provide the first evidence for quantum gravity. However, in the usual inflationary formalism, also the scalar modes involve quantised metric perturbations. We…
Slow-roll inflation generically makes several predictions: a flat Universe, primordial adiabatic density perturbations, and a stochastic gravity-wave background. Each inflation model will further predict specific relations between the…
In this review I consider several different issues related to inflation. I will begin with the wave function of the Universe. This issue is pretty old, but recently there were some new insights based on the theory of the self-reproducing…