Related papers: Initial Conditions for Inflation - A Short Review
The main aim of this paper is to provide a qualitative introduction to the cosmic inflation and its relationship with current cosmological observations. The inflationary model solves many of the fundamental problems that challenge the…
Attention has been recently drawn towards models in which inflation and quintessence schemes are unified. In such `quintessential inflation' models, a unique scalar field is required to play both the role of the inflaton and of the…
Slow-roll inflation generically makes several predictions: a flat Universe, primordial adiabatic density perturbations, and a stochastic gravity-wave background. Each inflation model will further predict specific relations between the…
We perform a numerical investigation of the field evolution in the smooth hybrid inflationary model. We find that for almost all the examined initial values we do get an adequate amount of inflation. Our results show that the model is…
Methods and concepts for the study of phase transitions mediated by a time-dependent order-parameter field in curved spacetimes are discussed. A practical example is the derivation of an effective (quasi-)potential for the description of…
We consider approaches to cosmological parameter estimation in the inflationary cosmology, focussing on the required accuracy of the initial power spectra. Parametrizing the spectra, for example by power-laws, is well suited to testing the…
Within the $\alpha$-attractors framework we investigate scalar potentials with the same pole as the one featured in the kinetic term. We show that, in field space, this leads to directions without a plateau. Using this, we present a…
Cosmological inflation is not the only early universe scenario consistent with current observational data. I will discuss the criteria for a successful early universe cosmology, compare a couple of the proposed scenarios (inflation,…
Assuming the existence of a cosmological constant depending on time, we study the evolution of this field in a local region of spacetime. Solving the standard equations of Einstein Relativity in the weak field approximation we find two…
We study how the initial inhomogeneities of the universe affect the onset of inflation in the closed universe. We consider the model of a chaotic inflation which is driven by a massive scalar field. In order to construct an inhomogeneous…
Within the framework of scalar-tensor theories, we study the conditions that allow single field inflation dynamics on small cosmological scales to significantly differ from that of the large scales probed by the observations of cosmic…
We consider inflation driven near a saddle point in a higher dimensional field space, which is the most likely type of slow roll inflation on the string theoretical landscape; anthropic arguments need to be invoked in order to find a…
A short introduction to structure formation is given, followed by a discussion of the possible characteristics of the initial perturbations assuming a generic inflationary origin. Observational data related to large-scale structure and the…
We analyze the onset of inflation for a simple single-field model when the system begins with significant inhomogeneities on length-scales shorter than the initial Hubble radius. We incorporate certain nonlinear interactions among the…
The inflationary paradigm provides a robust description of the peculiar initial conditions which are required for the success of the Hot Big Bang model of cosmology, as well as of the recent precision measurements of temperature…
Cosmic inflation provides a window to the highest energy densities accessible in nature, far beyond those achievable in any realistic terrestrial experiment. Theoretical insights into the inflationary era and its observational probes may…
We compute the spectrum of cosmological perturbations in a scenario in which inflation is driven by radiation in a non-commutative space-time. In this scenario, the non-commutativity of space and time leads to a modified dispersion relation…
In this paper, we consider a nonminimal coupling model between gravity and nonlinear electrodynamics with cosmological constant. This cosmological model is designed to account for both the inflationary epoch of the early universe and the…
This paper is intended to offer a pedagogical treatment of cosmological modeling and inflationary cosmology. In recent years, inflation has become accepted as a standard scenario making predictions that are testable by observations of the…
We review the constraints that the recently released Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) Planck data put on inflation and we argue that single field slow-roll inflationary scenarios (with minimal kinetic term) are favored. Then, within this…