Related papers: On the Three Primordial Numbers
We study cosmological solutions for the very early universe beginning at the Planck scale for a universe containing radiation, curvature and, as a simplification of a possible scalar field potential, a cosmological constant term. The…
Alan Guth introduced cosmologists to inflation at the 1980 Texas Symposium. Since, inflation has had almost as much impact on cosmology as the big-bang model itself. However, unlike the big-bang model, it has little observational support.…
The theory of eternal inflation in an inflaton potential with multiple vacua predicts that our universe is one of many bubble universes nucleating and growing inside an ever-expanding false vacuum. The collision of our bubble with another…
The early universe according to the big bang and the grand unified theories is discussed. The shortcomings of big bang are summarized together with their resolution by inflationary cosmology. Inflation, the subsequent oscillation and decay…
We are on the verge of the first precision testing of the inflationary cosmology as a model for the origin of structure in the Universe. I review the key predictions of inflation which can be used as observational tests, in the sense of…
We analyse numerically the onset of pre-big bang inflation in an inhomogeneous, spherically symmetric Universe. Adding a small dilatonic perturbation to a trivial (Milne) background, we find that suitable regions of space undergo…
Inflationary cosmology is the leading explanation of the very early universe. Many different models of inflation have been constructed which fit current observational data. In this work theoretical and numerical methods for constraining the…
After a brief summary of general relativity and cosmology, we present the basic concepts underlying inflation, the currently best motivated models for the early Universe. We describe the simplest inflation models, based on a single scalar…
Inflation elegantly provides initial conditions for the standard model of cosmology, while solving the horizon, flatness, and magnetic monopole problems. Inflationary models make predictions for the tensor-to-scalar ratio $r$ and the…
We reconsider the predictions of inflation for the spectral index of scalar (energy density) fluctuations (n_s) and the tensor/scalar ratio (r) using a discrete, model-independent measure of the degree of fine-tuning required to obtain a…
In a series of five lectures I review inflationary cosmology. I begin with a description of the initial conditions problems of the Friedmann-Robertson-Walker (FRW) cosmology and then explain how inflation, an early period of accelerated…
We investigate a fluid description of inflationary cosmology. It is shown that the three observables of the inflationary universe: the spectral index of the curvature perturbations, the tensor-to-scalar ratio of the density perturbations,…
The recently released data from the $\textit{Atacama Cosmology Telescope}$ (ACT) confirms that the primordial scalar spectrum is extremely flat. This, together with current upper bounds on the tensor-to-scalar ratio, implies that the…
Inflation has been the driving idea in cosmology for two decades and is a pillar of the New Cosmology. The inflationary paradigm has now passed its first round of significant tests, with two of its three basics predictions confirmed at…
A set of 3+1 equations for stochastic inflation incorporating all metric and scalar matter degrees of freedom, first presented in previous work, are re-derived in a gauge invariant manner. We then present numerical implementations of these…
Starobinsky's $R^2$ inflation manifests a best-fit scenario for the power spectrum of primordial density fluctuations. Observables derived from the slow-roll picture of the $R^2$ model in the Einstein frame relies on the conformal…
Inflation is a bold and expansive extension of the Standard Cosmology. It holds the promise to extend our understanding of the Universe to within 10^{-32}sec of the big bang and answer most of the pressing questions in cosmology. Its…
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…
The early Universe inflation is well known as a promising theory to explain the origin of large scale structure of the Universe, a causal theory for the origin of primordial density fluctuations which may explain the observed density…
If the inflaton potential has multiple minima, as may be expected in, e.g., the string theory "landscape", inflation predicts a probability distribution for the cosmological parameters describing spatial curvature (Omega_tot), dark energy…