Related papers: Observational Exclusion of a Consistent Quantum Co…
Inflation has been the leading early universe scenario for two decades, and has become an accepted element of the successful `cosmic concordance' model. However, there are many puzzling features of the resulting theory. It requires both…
Current astronomical observations are successfully explained by the present cosmological paradigm based on the concordance model ($\Lambda_0$CDM + Inflation). However, such a scenario is composed of a heterogeneous mix of ingredients for…
The theory of inflation provides an elegant explanation for the nearly flat universe observed today, which represents one of the pillars of the standard cosmological model. However, recent studies have reported some deviations from a flat…
We consider a novel model of cosmic inflation. In our model one does not need any specific matter field to drive inflation, but inflation stems from the microscopic, Planck scale structure of spacetime, thus being of quantum gravitational…
In the hope of avoiding model dependence of the cosmological observables, phenomenological parametrizations of Cosmic Inflation have recently been proposed. Typically, they are expressed in terms of two parameters associated with an…
The theory of cosmological fluctuations assumes that the pre-inflationary state of the universe was the quantum vacuum of a scalar field(s) coupled to gravity. The observed cosmic microwave background fluctuations are then interpreted as…
Cosmological perturbations generated during inflation exhibit striking quantum features, including entanglement and high circuit complexity. Yet their observational signatures remain effectively indistinguishable from classical stochastic…
This paper discusses the problem of inflation in the context of Friedmann-Robertson-Walker Cosmology. We show how, after a simple change of variables, one can quantize the problem in a way which parallels the classical discussion. The…
Quantum field theory, which is generally used to describe the origin of large-scale gravitational perturbations during cosmic inflation, has been shown to omit an important physical effect in curved space-time, the nonlocal entanglement…
Loop Quantum Gravity is a background independent, nonperturbative approach to the quantization of General Relativity. Its application to models of interest in cosmology and astrophysics, known as Loop Quantum Cosmology, has led to new and…
We investigate the $\phi^2$ inflationary model in the Bianchi-I spacetime using effective spacetime description of loop quantum cosmology to understand the issues of the resolution of initial singularity, isotropization, effect of…
Measurements of CMB anisotropy and, more recently, polarization have played a very important role allowing precise determination of various parameters of the `standard' cosmological model. The expectation of the paradigm of inflation and…
One way to judge the impact of the inflation concept is to consider where cosmology might be today without it. The Einstein-de Sitter model would not have been so keenly defended, and there might have been more interest in negative space…
Inflationary cosmological perturbations of quantum-mechanical origin generically interact with all degrees of freedom present in the early Universe. Therefore, they must be viewed as an open quantum system in interaction with an…
Closed, singularity-free, inflationary cosmological models have recently been studied in the context of general relativity. Despite their appeal, these so called emergent models suffer from a number of limitations. These include the fact…
In the minisuperspace models of quantum cosmology, the absence of time in the Wheeler-DeWitt (constraint) equation, is the main point leading to the generally accepted conclusion that in the quantum cosmology there is no possibility to…
There is solid theoretical and observational motivation behind the idea of scale-invariance as a fundamental symmetry of Nature. We consider a recently proposed classically scale-invariant inflationary model, quadratic in curvature and…
We consider curved space quantum corrections to the equations of motion of the inflaton field in the early Universe. Using the stochastic formalism in phase space, we demonstrate that the quantum corrected evolution of the inflaton can…
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 study aspects of quantum cosmology in the presence of a modified space-time geometry. In particular, within the context of Gravity's Rainbow modified geometry, motivated from quantum gravity corrections at the Planck energy scale, we…