Related papers: Observable Signatures of a Classical Transition
The eternal inflation scenario predicts that our observable universe resides inside a single bubble embedded in a vast inflating multiverse. We present the first observational tests of eternal inflation, performing a search for cosmological…
We clarify the way in which cosmological perturbations of quantum origin, produced during inflation, assume classical properties. Two features play an important role in this process: First, the dynamics of fluctuations which are presently…
Recent advances in observational cosmology are changing the way we view the nature of time. In general relativity, the freedom in choosing a time hypersurface has hampered the implementation of the theory. Fortunately, Hamilton-Jacobi…
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 show that on the average, homogeneous and isotropic scalar field and on the average homogeneous and isotropic ensembles of classical and quantum gravitational waves generate the de Sitter expansion of the empty (with no matter)…
Understanding the emergence of classical behavior from a quantum theory is vital to establishing the quantum origin for the temperature fluctuations observed in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). We show that a real-space approach can…
Inflationary cosmology attempts to provide a natural explanation for the flatness and homogeneity of the observable universe. In the context of reversible (unitary) evolution, this goal is difficult to satisfy, as Liouville's theorem…
We investigate the holographic quantum entanglement of a visible universe in an inflationary cosmology. To do so, we consider an AdS space with a dS boundary which represents an expanding space in time. In an inflationary cosmology, there…
Perhaps the deepest mystery of our accelerating Universe in expansion is the existence of a tiny and rigid cosmological constant, $\Lambda$. Its size is many orders of magnitude below the expected one in the standard model of particle…
Positively-curved, oscillatory universes are studied within the context of Loop Quantum Cosmology subject to a consistent semi-classical treatment. The semi-classical effects are reformulated in terms of an effective phantom fluid with a…
We demonstrate that in the presence of a light scalar spectator field, vacuum transitions taking place during inflation can produce large, potentially detectable non-Gaussian signatures in the primordial curvature perturbation. Such…
Eternal inflation produces pocket universes with all physically allowed vacua and histories. Some of these pocket universes might contain a phase of slow-roll inflation, some might undergo cycles of cosmological evolution and some might…
We propose a method to extract predictions from quantum cosmology for inflation that can be confronted with observations. Employing the tunneling boundary condition in quantum geometrodynamics, we derive a probability distribution for the…
This thesis is dedicated to studying cosmological inflation, which is a period of accelerated expansion in the very early Universe that is required to explain the observed anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background. Inflation, when…
The time evolution of primordial fluctuations conceals a wealth of insights into the high-energy physics at play during the earliest moments of our Universe, which is ultimately encoded in late-time spatial correlation functions. However,…
Combining intervals of ekpyrotic (ultra-slow) contraction with a (non-singular) classical bounce naturally leads to a novel cyclic theory of the universe in which the Hubble parameter, energy density and temperature oscillate periodically,…
Possibly, the most general action in the background of isotropic and homogeneous space-time has been considered to study the quantum evolution of the early universe, apart from a cosmological constant. The hermiticity of the effective…
We consider the no-boundary proposal for homogeneous isotropic closed universes with a cosmological constant and a scalar field with a quadratic potential. In the semi-classical limit, it predicts classical behavior at late times if the…
We investigate three issues that have been discussed in the context of inflation: Fading of the importance of quantum non-commutativity; the phenomenon of quantum squeezing; and the ability to approximate the quantum state by a distribution…
All cosmological observations to date are consistent with adiabatic, Gaussian and nearly scale invariant initial conditions. These findings provide strong evidence for a particular symmetry breaking pattern in the very early universe (with…