Related papers: Inflationary Cosmology after Planck 2013
Cosmological inflation is not the only early universe scenario consistent with current observational data. I will discuss the criteria for a successful early universe cosmology, compare a couple of the proposed scenarios (inflation,…
These notes are intended as an introductory course for experimental particle physicists interested in the recent developments in astrophysics and cosmology. I will describe the standard Big Bang theory of the evolution of the universe, with…
A brief review of inflation is presented. After having demonstrated the generality of the inflationary mechanism, the emphasize is put on its simplest realization, namely the single field slow-roll inflationary scenario. Then, it is shown…
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…
We present a brief review of the main results of the Planck 2015 release describing the new calibration of the data, showing the maps delivered in temperature and, for the first time, in polarization, the cosmological parameters and the…
In these lectures I review the standard hot big-bang cosmology, emphasizing its successes, its shortcomings, and its major challenge---a detailed understanding of the formation of structure in the Universe. I then discuss the motivations…
It has been proposed that the successful inflationary description of density perturbations on cosmological scales is sensitive to the details of physics at extremely high (trans-Planckian) energies. We test this proposal by examining how…
After a brief review of the theory of cosmological perturbations, I highlight some recent progress in the area of reheating in inflationary cosmology, focusing in particular on parametric amplification of super-Hubble cosmological…
We investigate the insensitivity of the predictions of inflationary models with respect to modifications of Planck energy physics. The modification we consider consists in replacing the usual dispersion relation by nonlinear ones. This way…
We update the constraints on possible features in the primordial inflationary density perturbation spectrum by using the latest data from the WMAP7 and ACT Cosmic Microwave Background experiments. The inclusion of new data significantly…
Given the proliferation of bouncing models in recent years, we gather and critically assess these proposals in a comprehensive review. The Planck data shows an unmistakably red, quasi scale-invariant, purely adiabatic primordial power…
We analyze the latest cosmic microwave background (CMB) constraints on the scalar spectral index $n_s$ and tensor-to-scalar ratio $r$ from Planck 2018, BICEP/Keck 2018, the Atacama Cosmology Telescope Data Release 6 (ACT DR6), and the South…
Multifield models of inflation with nonminimal couplings are in excellent agreement with the recent results from {\it Planck}. Across a broad range of couplings and initial conditions, such models evolve along an effectively single-field…
I present a pedagogical review of inflation and the cosmic microwave background. I describe how a short period of accelerated expansion can replace the special initial conditions of the standard big bang model. I also describe the…
Modern cosmology provides a connection between the physics of particles and fields and observational cosmology. Making use of this link, a wealth of new observational data can be utilized to explore and constrain theories of fundamental…
Warm inflation has normalized two ideas in cosmology, that in the early universe the initial primordial density perturbations generally could be of classical rather than quantum origin and that during inflation, particle production from…
We discuss how initial conditions for cosmological evolution can be defined in Loop Quantum Cosmology with massive scalar field and how the presence of the bounce influences the probability of inflation in this theory, compared with General…
Recently a broad class of superconformal inflationary models was found leading to a universal observational prediction $n_s=1-2/N$ and $r=12/N^2$. Here we generalize this class of models by introducing a parameter $\alpha$ inversely…
Inflation has been the leading early universe scenario for two decades, and has become an accepted element of the successful `cosmic concordance' model. However, there are many puzzling features of the resulting theory. It requires both…
We provide a unified description of cosmological $\alpha$-attractors and late-time acceleration, in excellent agreement with the latest Planck data. Our construction involves two superfields playing distinctive roles: one is the dynamical…