Related papers: Cosmological fluctuations: Comparing Quantum and C…
Inflationary cosmology successfully accounts for the observed properties of primordial fluctuations using quantum field theory in an expanding background. However, the quantum nature of these fluctuations has not been experimentally…
The status of quantum cosmologies as testable models of the early universe is assessed in the context of inflation. While traditional Wheeler-DeWitt quantization is unable to produce sizable effects in the cosmic microwave background, the…
We examine from first principles one of the basic assumptions of modern quantum theories of structure formation in the early universe, i.e., the conditions upon which fluctuations of a quantum field may transmute into classical stochastic…
In the context of loop quantum cosmology, we consider an inflationary era driven by a canonical scalar field and occurring in the semiclassical regime, where spacetime is a continuum but quantum gravitational effects are important. The…
We show that inflationary cosmology may be used to test the statistical predictions of quantum theory at very short distances and at very early times. Hidden-variables theories, such as the pilot-wave theory of de Broglie and Bohm, allow…
In this article we review the theory of cosmological inflation with a particular focus on the beautiful connection it provides between the physics of the very small and observations of the very large. We explain how quantum mechanical…
Recently, we presented a unified way of analysing classical cosmological perturbation in generalized gravity theories. In this paper, we derive the perturbation spectrums generated from quantum fluctuations again in unified forms. We…
Recent observations about the cosmic microwave background evidence a clear discrepancy between the scale of inflation and the Planck scale expected in the conventional inflationary picture, based on simple chaotic inflationary models. This…
During the inflationary phase of the early universe, quantum fluctuations in the vacuum generate particles as they stretch beyond the Hubble length. These fluctuations are thought to result in the density fluctuations and gravitational…
Inflation in the early Universe is one of the most promising probes of gravity in the high-energy regime. However, observable scales give access to a limited window in the inflationary dynamics. In this essay, we argue that quantum…
The Pre-Big Bang cosmology inspired generations of cosmologists in attempts to cure the initial Big Bang singularity using a fundamental length scale as proposed by String Theory. The existence of a phase of collapse/inflation with…
The pre--big bang cosmological scenario is studied within the context of the Brans--Dicke theory of gravity. An epoch of superinflationary expansion may occur in the pre--big bang phase of the Universe's history in a certain region of…
We compute the spectral distribution of the quantum fluctuations of the vacuum, amplified by inflation, after an arbitrary number of background transitions. Using a graphic representation of the process we find that the final spectrum can…
Cosmological perturbations are generally described by quantum fields on (curved but) classical space-times. While this strategy has a large domain of validity, it can not be justified in the quantum gravity era where curvature and matter…
The notion of vacuum fluctuations of the gravitational field plays important role in cosmology. The strong variable gravitational field of the very early Universe amplifies these fluctuations and transforms them into macroscopical…
Observations of the cosmic microwave sky are revealing the primordial non-uniformities from which all structure in the Universe grew. The only known physical mechanism for generating the inhomogeneities we see involves the amplification of…
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…
We study a cosmological scenario in which inflation is preceded by a bounce. In this scenario, the primordial singularity, one of the major shortcomings of inflation, is replaced by a non-singular bounce, prior to which the universe…
Detailed measurements of the cosmic microwave background indicate the large-scale homogeneity of the universe. On very small scales, we observe however inhomogeneities such as galaxies, stars, planets and ourselves. In the context of hot…
We study the effects of the trans-Planckian dispersion relation on the spectrum of the primordial density perturbations during inflation. In contrast to the earlier analyses, we do not assume any specific form of the dispersion relation and…