Related papers: A Quantum Window Onto Early Inflation
Inflation is a bold and expansive extension of the Standard Cosmology. It holds the promise to extend our understanding of the Universe to within 10^{-32}sec of the big bang and answer most of the pressing questions in cosmology. Its…
These lectures are intended to give a pedagogical introduction to the main current picture of the very early universe. After elementary reviews of general relativity and of the standard Big Bang model, the following subjects are discussed:…
A scale-invariant universe can have a period of accelerated expansion at early times: inflation. We use a frame-invariant approach to calculate inflationary observables in a scale invariant theory of gravity involving two scalar fields -…
We review some recent progress in the extraction of inflationary observables in loop quantum cosmology. Inverse-volume quantum corrections induce a growth of power in the large-scale cosmological spectra and are constrained by observations.
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…
We compute the primordial scalar, vector and tensor metric perturbations arising from quantum field inflation. Quantum field inflation takes into account the nonperturbative quantum dynamics of the inflaton consistently coupled to the…
According to the most popular scenario, the early Universe should have experienced an accelerated expansion phase, called Cosmological Inflation, after which the standard Big Bang Cosmology would have taken place giving rise to the…
An introductory account is given of the modern understanding of the physics of the early Universe. Particular emphasis is placed on the paradigm of cosmological inflation, which postulates a period of accelerated expansion during the…
One possible description of the very early stages of the evolution of the universe is provided by Chaotic Inflationary Cosmology. For that model the role of the inflaton field is played by quantum gravitational effects. We study if such a…
Inflationary cosmology successfully accounts for the observed properties of primordial fluctuations using quantum field theory in an expanding background. However, the quantum nature of these fluctuations has not been experimentally…
Inflationary cosmology has become one of the cornerstones of modern cosmology. Inflation was the first theory within which it was possible to make predictions about the structure of the Universe on large scales, based on causal physics. The…
Using techniques from loop quantum gravity, the standard theory of cosmological perturbations was recently generalized to encompass the Planck era. We now apply this framework to explore pre-inflationary dynamics. The framework enables us…
In this paper we consider realistic model of inflation embedded in the framework of loop quantum cosmology. Phase of inflation is preceded here by the phase of a quantum bounce. We show how parameters of inflation depend on the initial…
Quantum geometry predicts that a universe evolves through an inflationary phase at small volume before exiting gracefully into a standard Friedmann phase. This does not require the introduction of additional matter fields with ad hoc…
Two extensions of ideas lying in the basis of the inflationary scenario of the early Universe and their effect on the large scale structure of the present-day Universe are discussed. The first of them is the possibility of fast phase…
Loop quantum cosmology provides an efficient framework to study the evolution of the Universe beyond the classical Big Bang paradigm. Because of holonomy corrections, the singularity is replaced by a "bounce". The dynamics of the background…
Models of cosmic inflation suggest that our universe underwent an early phase of accelerated expansion, driven by the dynamics of one or more scalar fields. Inflationary models make specific, quantitative predictions for several observable…
Understanding the behavior of the universe at large depends critically on insights about the smallest units of matter and their fundamental interactions. Inflationary cosmology is a highly successful framework for exploring these…
Warm inflation has normalized two ideas in cosmology, that in the early universe the initial primordial density perturbations generally could be of classical rather than quantum origin and that during inflation, particle production from…
A brief review of the modern state of quantum cosmology is presented as a theory of quantum initial conditions for inflationary scenario. The no-boundary and tunneling states of the Universe are discussed as a possible source of probability…