Related papers: Classification of inflationary models and constrai…
Supersolid inflation is a class of inflationary theories that simultaneously breaks time and space reparameterization invariance during inflation, with distinctive features for the dynamics of cosmological fluctuations. We investigate…
Recent observations opened up a new window on the inflationary model building. As it was firstly reported by the WMAP data, there may be some indications of statistical anisotropy on the CMB map, although the statistical significance of…
Recent results from cosmic microwave background (CMB) experiments verify several of the predictions of inflation, while ruling out a number of alternative structure-formation scenarios. Given the successes of the theory, the obvious next…
This thesis is dedicated to the study of inflationary scenarios based on string theory. Inflation is a brief period of accelerated expansion in the very early Universe which gives natural explanations for problems of the Standard Big Bang…
This is a very comprehensible review of some key issues in Modern Cosmology. Simple mathematical examples and analogies are always used, whenever available. The starting point is the well know Big Bang Cosmology (BBC). We deal with the…
An epoch of accelerated expansion, or inflation, in the early universe solves several cosmological problems. While there are many models of inflation only recently has it become possible to discriminate between some of the models using…
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…
These lectures provide an introductory review of big bang cosmology. I discuss the expanding Friedmann-Robertson-Walker universe, summarizing the observational evidence which has led to its adoption as the `standard' cosmological model and…
In this paper we propose a novel unified cosmological model that connects a pre-inflationary epoch, starting at the Planckian time, with the onset of inflation within a single scalar-field framework. The pre-inflationary phase is…
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…
I discuss how parameters describing inflation in the very early universe may be related to primordial perturbation spectra. Precision observations of anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) such as those provided by the WMAP…
The existence of the inflationary era in the early Universe seems to be strongly supported by recent CMB observations. However, only a few realistic inflation scenarios which have close relation to particle physics seem to have been known…
This article provides an introductory review of inflation and cosmological perturbation theory. I begin by motivating the need for an epoch of inflation during the early stages of the radiation dominated era, and describe how inflation is…
The standard model of cosmology with nearly Gaussian, isotropic, scale invariant and adiabatic initial conditions describes the cosmological observations well. However, the study of any deviation from the mentioned conditions will open up a…
Cosmic inflation is arguably the most favoured paradigm of the very early Universe. It postulates an early phase of fast, nearly exponential, and accelerated expansion. Inflationary models are capable of explaining the overall flatness and…
In these lectures I review the standard hot big-bang cosmology, emphasizing its successes, its shortcomings, and its major challenges-developing a detailed understanding of the formation of structure in the Universe and identifying the…
We analyse the efficiency of future large scale structure surveys to unveil the presence of scale dependent features in the primordial spectrum --resulting from cosmic inflation-- imprinted in the distribution of galaxies. Features may…
Cosmological phase transitions (CPTs), such as the Grand Unified Theory (GUT) and the electroweak (EW) ones, play a significant role in both particle physics and cosmology. In this letter, we propose to probe the first-order CPTs, by…
The standard model of cosmology is based on the hot Big Bang theory and the inflationary paradigm. Recent precise observations of the temperature and polarization anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background and the matter distribution…
Cosmological $\alpha$-attractors stand out as particularly compelling models to describe inflation in the very early universe, naturally meeting tight observational bounds from cosmic microwave background (CMB) experiments. We investigate…