Related papers: Quantum coherent oscillations in the early univers…
We examine the classical and quantum evolution of inflationary cosmological perturbations from quantum initial conditions, using the on-shell and off-shell contributions to correlators to investigate the signatures of interactions. In…
We consider a model of modified gravity from the nonperturbative quantization of a metric. We obtain the modified gravitational field equations and the modified conservational equations. We apply it to the FLRW spacetime and find that due…
The purpose of these lectures is to give a pedagogical introduction to inflation and the production of primordial perturbations, as well as a review of some of the latest developments in this domain. After a short introduction, we review…
In loop quantum gravity, modifications to the geometrical density cause a self-interacting scalar field to accelerate away from a minimum of its potential. In principle, this mechanism can generate the conditions that subsequently lead to…
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…
In inflationary cosmological models driven by an inflaton field the origin of the primordial inhomogeneities which are responsible for large scale structure formation are the quantum fluctuations of the inflaton field. These are usually…
Cosmological phase transitions are thought to have taken place at the early Universe imprinting their properties on the observable Universe. There is strong evidence that, through the dynamics of a scalar field that lead a second order…
In an alternative mechanism recently proposed, adiabatic cosmological perturbations are generated at the decay of the inflaton field due to small fluctuations of its coupling to matter. This happens whenever the coupling is governed by the…
As part of our program to develop a general theory of relativity for open systems, we introduce a covariant theory that incorporates the effects of classical and quantum spacetime alterations in a new metric tensor that effectively includes…
The linear cosmological perturbation theory of almost homogeneous and isotropic perfect fluid and scalar field universes is reconsidered and formally simplified. Using the existence of a covariant conserved quantity on large perturbation…
We consider a quantum mechanical system to model the effect of quantum fields on the evolution of the early universe. The system consists of an inverted oscillator bilinearly coupled to a set of harmonic oscillators. We point out that the…
Cosmology appears as the most promising way to test and constrain quantum gravity theories. Loop quantum gravity is among the most advanced attempts to perform a non-perturbative quantization of general relativity. Its cosmological…
The perturbations in the early universe are generated as a result of the interplay between quantum field theory and gravitation. Since these primordial perturbations lead to the anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background and eventually…
A recent variant of the inflationary paradigm is that the ``primordial'' curvature perturbations come from quantum fluctuations of a scalar field, subdominant and effectively massless during inflation, called the ``curvaton'', instead of…
Current observational data is consistent with the universe being slightly closed. We investigate families of singular and non-singular closed instantons that could describe the beginning of a closed inflationary universe. We calculate the…
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…
The manner in which one approaches the interface between gravitation and quantum theory is influenced by one's posture regarding quantum mechanics and the issues that revolve about its interpretational problems. We discuss here the way in…
Cosmological perturbations, originating in the quantum fluctuations of the fields that drive inflation, are observed to be nearly scale invariant at the largest scales. At smaller scales, however, perturbations are not severely constrained…
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…
Inflationary models, especially those with plateau-type potentials, are consistent with the cosmological data, but inflation itself does not resolve the initial singularity. This singularity is resolved, for example, by the idea of the…