Related papers: Loop quantum cosmology, non-Gaussianity, and CMB p…
These lecture notes comprise an informal but pedagogical introduction to the well established physics and phenomenology of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) between big bang nucleosynthesis and recombination. The dominant properties of…
The hemispherical power asymmetry in the cosmic microwave background may be explained by the modulation of some primordial cosmological parameter, such as the sound speed of the inflaton. This modulation can be achieved by the perturbation…
A B-mode polarization signal in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) is widely regarded as smoking gun evidence for gravitational waves produced during inflation. Here, we demonstrate that tensor perturbations sourced during…
In order to investigate the potential observational signals of different regularization ambiguities in loop quantum cosmological models, we systematically compute and compare the primordial scalar power spectra and the resulting angular…
In standard inflationary cosmology, scalar and tensor perturbations grew as the Universe expanded and froze when their wavelengths exceeded the Hubble horizon, producing a tell-tale signature in the fluctuation spectrum and amplitude of the…
We present an in depth discussion of the production of gravitational waves from an inflationary phase that could have occurred in the early universe, giving derivations for the resulting spectrum and energy density. We also consider the…
While loop quantum cosmology (LQC) predicts a robust quantum bounce of the background evolution of a Friedmann-Robertson-Walker (FRW) spacetime prior to the standard slow-roll inflation, whereby the big bang singularity is resolved, there…
We investigate the primordial power spectrum of the density perturbations based on the assumption that spacetime is noncommutative in the early stage of inflation. Due to the spacetime noncommutativity, the primordial power spectrum can…
Repeated studies of the CMB based on WMAP data have revealed an apparent asymmetry in the distribution of temperature fluctuations over the celestial sphere. The studies indicate that the amplitudes of temperature fluctuations are higher in…
We discuss the polarization signature of primordial gravitational waves imprinted in cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropies. The high-energy physics motivated by superstring theory or M-theory generically yield parity violating…
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…
It is known that in loop quantum cosmology (LQC) the universe avoids the singularity by a bounce when the matter density approaches the critical density $\rho_c$ (the order of Planck density). After incorporating the inverse volume…
In inflation cosmologies, cosmic structure develops through the gravitational instability of the inevitable quantum noise in primordial scalar fields. I show how the acceleration of the universe defines the shape of the primordial spectrum…
We compute the fully non-linear Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) anisotropies on scales larger than the horizon at last-scattering in terms of only the curvature perturbation, providing a generalization of the linear Sachs-Wolfe effect at…
We propose a $\Lambda$-inflation model which explains a large fraction of the COBE signal by cosmic gravitational waves. The primordial density perturbations fulfil both the contraints of large-scale microwave background and galaxy cluster…
Quantum gravity, as a fundamental theory of space-time, is expected to reveal how the universe may have started, perhaps during or before an inflationary epoch. It may then leave a potentially observable (but probably minuscule) trace in…
Certain anomalies in the CMB bring out a tension between the six-parameter flat $\Lambda$CDM model and the CMB data. We revisit the PLANCK analysis with loop quantum cosmology (LQC) predictions and show that LQC alleviates both the…
In this paper we provide a prescription for obtaining a small non-Gaussianity and the observed dipole asymmetry in the cosmic microwave background radiation. The observations inevitably lead to multi-field inflationary dynamics, where each…
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…
The emergence of several unexpected large-scale features in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) has pointed to possible new physics driving the origin of density fluctuations in the early Universe and their evolution into the large-scale…