Related papers: A Quantum Window Onto Early Inflation
The early Universe inflation is well known as a promising theory to explain the origin of large scale structure of the Universe, a causal theory for the origin of primordial density fluctuations which may explain the observed density…
Observational cosmology is in its "golden age" with a vast amount of recent data on the distribution of matter and light in the universe. This data can be used to probe theories of the very early universe. It is small amplitude cosmological…
According to the inflationary scenario of cosmology, all structure in the Universe can be traced back to primordial fluctuations during an accelerated (inflationary) phase of the very early Universe. A conceptual problem arises due to the…
The theory of cosmological perturbations has become a cornerstone of modern quantitative cosmology since it is the framework which provides the link between the models of the very early Universe such as the inflationary Universe scenario…
In this article we review the theory of cosmological inflation with a particular focus on the beautiful connection it provides between the physics of the very small and observations of the very large. We explain how quantum mechanical…
Inflation offers a simple model for very early evolution of our Universe and the origin of primordial perturbations on large scales. Over the last 25 years we have become familiar with the predictions of single-field models, but inflation…
The particle production process is reviewed, through which cosmic inflation can produce a scale invariant superhorizon spectrum of perturbations of suitable fields starting from their quantum fluctuations. Afterwards, in the context of the…
A particular compensation-type solution of the main cosmological constant problem has been proposed recently, with two massless vector fields dynamically canceling an arbitrary cosmological constant \Lambda. The naive expectation is that…
We consider the fate of the observable universe in the light of the discovery of a dark energy component to the cosmic energy budget. We extend results for a cosmological constant to a general dark energy component and examine the…
In a previous paper we proposed a new approach to the beginning of inflation -- a lingering universe. The universe begins in a lingering state with a nearly vanishing Hubble parameter. This calls into question the absolute age of the…
In the framework of a cosmological model of the Universe filled with a nonrelativistic particle soup, we easily reproduce inflation due to the quantum potential. The lightest particles in the soup serve as a driving force of this simple,…
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…
Inflation predicts that quantum fluctuations determine the large scale structure of the Universe. This raises the striking possibility that quantum mechanics, developed to describe nature at short distances, can be tested by studying nature…
Quantum diffusion describes the inflow of vacuum quantum fluctuations as they get amplified by gravitational instability, and stretched to large distances during inflation. In this picture, the dynamics of the universe's expansion becomes…
We prove that in the Hartle-Hawking approach to quantum cosmology the existence of an inflationary phase is a general property of minisuperspace models given by a closed Friedmann-Robertson-Walker universe containing a massless scalar field…
In this paper we investigate the cosmological dynamics of geometric inflation by means of the tools of the dynamical systems theory. We focus in the study of two explicit models where it is possible to sum the infinite series of higher…
In loop quantum gravity, modifications to the geometrical density cause a self-interacting scalar field to accelerate away from a minimum of its potential. In principle, this mechanism can generate the conditions that subsequently lead to…
In this review I consider several different issues related to inflation. I will begin with the wave function of the Universe. This issue is pretty old, but recently there were some new insights based on the theory of the self-reproducing…
The inflationary scenario for the brane world driven by the bulk inflaton is proposed. The quantum fluctuations of the inflaton is calculated and compared to those of the conventional 4-dimensional inflationary scenario. It is shown that…
In the context of loop quantum cosmology, we consider an inflationary era driven by a canonical scalar field and occurring in the semiclassical regime, where spacetime is a continuum but quantum gravitational effects are important. The…