Related papers: Non-thermal Histories and Implications for Structu…
A better understanding of the formation of large-scale structure in the Universe is arguably the most pressing question in cosmology. The most compelling and promising theoretical paradigm, Inflation + Cold Dark Matter, holds that the…
The prediction of a nearly scale-invariant spectrum of curvature and tensor fluctuations is among the main features of cosmic inflation. The current measurements of the primordial fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background (CMB)…
We study the impact of thermal inflation on the formation of cosmological structures and present astrophysical observables which can be used to constrain and possibly probe the thermal inflation scenario. These are dark matter halo…
In warm dark matter scenarios structure formation is suppressed on small scales with respect to the cold dark matter case, reducing the number of low-mass halos and the fraction of ionized gas at high redshifts and thus, delaying…
We consider the non-commutative inflation model of [3] in which it is the unconventional dispersion relation for regular radiation which drives the accelerated expansion of space. In this model, we study the evolution of linear cosmological…
We study the effect on the primordial cosmological perturbations of a sharp transition from inflationary to a radiation and matter dominated epoch respectively. We assume that the perturbations are generated by the vacuum fluctuations of a…
In simple inflationary cosmological scenarios the near-exponential growth can be followed by a long period in which the Universe is dominated by the oscillating inflaton condensate. The condensate is initially almost homogeneous, but…
We describe the evolution of Dark Matter (DM) abundance from the very onset of its creation from inflaton decay under the assumption of an instantaneous reheating. Based on the initial conditions such as the inflaton mass and its decay…
All commonly considered dark matter scenarios are based on hypothetical particles with small but non-zero thermal velocities and tiny interaction cross-sections. A generic consequence of these attributes is the suppression of small-scale…
The development of methods and algorithms to solve the $N$-body problem for classical, collisionless, non-relativistic particles has made it possible to follow the growth and evolution of cosmic dark matter structures over most of the…
If the dark matter is part of a hidden sector with only very feeble couplings to the Standard Model, the lightest particle in the hidden sector will generically be long-lived and could come to dominate the energy density of the universe…
We extend the analysis of the recently obtained stringy cosmological solutions induced by thermal and quantum effects, once space-time supersymmetry is spontaneously broken by geometrical fluxes. Cases in which more than one modulus…
Cosmological moduli generically come to dominate the energy density of the early universe, and thereby trigger an early matter dominated era. Such non-standard cosmological histories are expected to have profound effects on the evolution…
If the Universe's energy density was dominated by a fast-rolling scalar field while the radiation bath was hot enough to thermally produce dark matter, then dark matter with larger-than-canonical annihilation cross sections can generate the…
Light dark photons are subject to various plasma effects, such as Debye screening and resonant oscillations, which can lead to a more complex cosmological evolution than is experienced by conventional cold dark matter candidates.…
After cosmic inflation and before the transition to radiation domination, the cosmic energy density may have been dominated during an extended period by an oscillating massive scalar condensate. We show that during this period, sub-Hubble…
We study evolution of dark matter substructures, especially how they lose the mass and change density profile after they fall in gravitational potential of larger host halos. We develop an analytical prescription that models the subhalo…
In a broad class of scenarios, inflation is followed by an extended era of matter-dominated expansion during which the inflaton condensate is nonrelativistic on subhorizon scales. During this phase density perturbations grow to the point of…
We investigate the matter creation processes during the reheating period at the end of inflation in the early Universe, by using the irreversible thermodynamic of open systems. The matter content of the Universe is assumed to consist of 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…