Related papers: Inflationary Cosmology after Planck 2013
A remarkable property of modern cosmology is that it allows for a special case of symmetry, consisting in the possibility of describing the early-time acceleration (inflation) and the late-time acceleration using the same theoretical…
After the last PLANCK CMB data the plateau inflationary potentials are favored. I give some examples of such inflationary models emphasizing particularly on the Starobinsky model and its supergravity embedding. I discuss the crucial…
These lectures provide an introductory review of big bang cosmology. I discuss the expanding Friedmann-Robertson-Walker universe, summarizing the observational evidence which has led to its adoption as the `standard' cosmological model and…
Inflationary cosmology has provided a predictive and phenomenologically very successful scenario for early universe cosmology. Attempts to implement inflation using scalar fields, however, lead to models with serious conceptual problems. I…
The inflationary scenario is not the only paradigm of early universe cosmology which is consistent with current observations. General criteria will be presented which any successful early universe model must satisfy. Various ways, including…
In these lectures I focus on early universe models which can explain the currently observed structure on large scales. I begin with a survey of inflationary cosmology, the current paradigm for understanding the origin of the universe as we…
These four lectures cover four topics in modern cosmology: the cosmological constant, the cosmic microwave background, inflation, and cosmology as a probe of physics at the Planck scale. The underlying theme is that cosmology gives us a…
In light of the recent results from the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT), which have provided a notable shift in the constraints on $(n_s, r)$ and placed several otherwise viable models of inflation in tension with the latest data, we…
These lectures present a brief review of inflationary cosmology, provide an overview of the theory of cosmological perturbations, and then focus on the conceptual problems of the current paradigm of early universe cosmology, thus motivating…
We report on the implications for cosmic inflation of the 2018 Release of the Planck CMB anisotropy measurements. The results are fully consistent with the two previous Planck cosmological releases, but have smaller uncertainties thanks to…
I give a brief review of the status of research on the nature of initial conditions required to obtain a period of cosmological inflation. It is shown that there is good evidence that in the case of large field models, the inflationary…
The inflationary scenario has become the paradigm of early universe cosmology, and - in conjuction with ideas from superstring theory - has led to speculations about an "inflationary multiverse". From a point of view of phenomenology, the…
We show that a combination of the simplest $\alpha$-attractors and KKLTI models related to Dp-brane inflation covers most of the area in the ($n_{s}$, $r$) space favored by Planck 2018. For $\alpha$-attractor models, there are discrete…
We investigate how various inflationary and bouncing cosmologies can be realized by imperfect fluids with a generalized equation of state, in the context of both classical and loop quantum cosmology. With regards to the inflationary…
A new family of inflation models is introduced and studied. The models are characterised by a scalar potential which, far from the origin, approaches an inflationary plateau in a power-law manner, while near the origin becomes monomial, as…
I review the current status of the theory of Cosmic Inflation. My discussion covers the motivation and implementation of the idea, as well as an analysis of recent successes and open questions. There is a special discussion of the physics…
The next decade will feature an abundance of novel cosmological data, while many fundamental questions about inflation remain. Given this, there is ample need for maximally efficient calculations, especially in non-standard scenarios for…
Recently researchers have been studying various conditions as swampland criteria in cosmological implications. They have studied many inflation models with different swampland conditions. Occasionally these conjectures are modified and lead…
We discuss early cosmology in theories where the fundamental Planck mass is close to the TeV scale. In such theories the standard model fields are localized to a (3+1)-dimensional wall with n new transverse sub-millimeter sized spatial…
This is a very comprehensible review of some key issues in Modern Cosmology. Simple mathematical examples and analogies are always used, whenever available. The starting point is the well know Big Bang Cosmology (BBC). We deal with the…