Related papers: Inflationary electroweak/particle phase transition…
The early stages of the universe evolution are discussed according to the hot big bang model and the grand unified theories. The shortcomings of big bang are summarized and their resolution by inflationary cosmology is sketched.…
Inflationary gravitational waves (GW) contribute to the curl component in the polarization of the CMB. Cosmic shear--gravitational lensing of the CMB-- converts a fraction of the dominant gradient polarization to the curl component.…
In scale-invariant models of fundamental physics all mass scales are generated via spontaneous symmetry breaking. In this work, we study inflation in scale-invariant quadratic gravity, in which the Planck mass is generated classically by a…
On the frequency-amplitude plane, Gravitational Waves (GWs) from cosmic strings show a flat plateau at higher frequencies due to the string loop dynamics in standard radiation dominated post-inflationary epoch. The spectrum may show an…
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…
Inflationary cosmology has proved to be the most successful at predicting the properties of the anisotropies observed in the cosmic microwave background (CMB). In this essay we show that quantum field renormalization significantly…
Various mechanisms have been suggested for the formation of Primordial Black Holes (PBHs), and this thesis focuses on the standard mechanism based on the critical collapse of cosmological fluctuations. The underlying idea is that during…
We assume that the origin of the electroweak (EW) scale is a gauge-invariant scalar-bilinear condensation in a strongly interacting non-abelian gauge sector, which is connected to the standard model via a Higgs portal coupling. The…
We explore a model of the early universe in which the inflationary epoch is preceded by a cosmic bounce, and argue that this scenario provides a common origin to several of the anomalous features that have been observed at large angular…
Upcoming searches for the stochastic background of inflationary gravitational waves (GWs) offer the exciting possibility to probe the evolution of our Universe prior to Big Bang nucleosynthesis. In this spirit, we explore the sensitivity of…
Gravitons produced from quantum vacuum fluctuations during an inflationary stage in the early Universe have zero entropy as far as they reflect the time evolution (squeezing) of a pure state, their large occupation number notwithstanding. A…
In this work, we systematically study gravitational wave (GW) production during both the inflationary and post-inflationary epochs. While inflationary GWs can be readily derived from tensor perturbations during inflation, post-inflationary…
We reexamine the recently proposed "little inflation" scenario that allows for a strong first order phase-transition of QCD at non-negligible baryon number in the early universe and its possible observable consequences. The scenario is…
We reevaluate the predictions of inflation regarding primordial gravity waves, which should appear as B-modes in the CMB, in light of the fact that the standard inflationary paradigm is unable to account for the transition from an initially…
First order phase transitions in the early universe naturally lead to the production of a stochastic background of gravitational waves and to the generation of a matter-antimatter asymmetry. The dynamics of the phase transition is affected…
The QCD phase diagram might exhibit a first order phase transition for large baryochemical potentials. We explore the cosmological implications of such a QCD phase transition in the early universe. We propose that the large baryon-asymmetry…
We point out that the temperature fluctuations of cosmic microwave background (CMB) can be generated in a way that is different from the one usually assumed in slow-roll inflation. Our mechanism is based on vacuum fluctuations of fields…
The anisotropy study cosmic microwave background (CMB) is one of the main observational tools for modern cosmology. However, alongside the study of the thermal fluctuations of the CMB are other equally important information, which is known…
The temperature fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background observed by COBE provide strong support for an inflationary phase in the early universe, below the GUT scale. We argue that a singlet field in a hidden sector of an effective…
Primordial gravitational waves (GWs) with frequencies > 10^{-15} Hz contribute to the radiation density of the Universe at the time of decoupling of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). The effects of this GW background on the CMB and…