Related papers: Can Cosmology Provide a Test of Quantum Mechanics?
These lecture notes intend to form a short pedagogical introduction to inflationary cosmology, highlighting selected areas of recent progress such as reheating and the theory of cosmological perturbations. Problems of principle for…
We investigate the cosmological behavior in a universe governed by time asymmetric extensions of general relativity, which is a novel modified gravity based on the addition of new, time-asymmetric, terms on the Hamiltonian framework, in a…
Quantum cosmology describes universe as a relativistic object with an evolution defined by an equation for the energy density corresponding to the least action principle: (Taganov, 2008). In quantum cosmology this equation plays the same…
The standard inflationary version of the origin of the cosmic structure as the result of the quantum fluctuations during the inflationary stage is less than fully satisfactory: how exactly does the Universe transit from a homogeneous and…
The world view suggested by quantum cosmology is that inflating universes with all possible values of the fundamental constants are spontaneously created out of nothing. I explore the consequences of the assumption that we are a `typical'…
Predictions from early universe cosmology typically concern primordial perturbations generated during epochs where effects arising from the quantum nature of gravity may be important; quantum vacuum fluctuations being stretched to…
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…
The purpose of the paper, of which this is part II, is to review, clarify, and critically analyse modern mathematical cosmology. The emphasis is upon mathematical objects and structures, rather than numerical computations. Part II provides…
Observable quantities in cosmology are dimensionless, and therefore independent of the units in which they are measured. This is true of all physical quantities associated with the primordial perturbations that source cosmic microwave…
The probability of there being sufficient inflation to solve the fine-tuning associated with the horizon and flatness problems has recently been shown to be exponentially small, within the context of classical general relativity. Here this…
We consider the hypothesis that quantum mechanics is an approximation to another, cosmological theory, accurate only for the description of subsystems of the universe. Quantum theory is then to be derived from the cosmological theory by…
We suggest a new conceptual frame where inflationary Cosmology is quantum mechanically described using the Hilbert space representation of the crossed product of the type $III$ factor associated with the algebra of local operators on the de…
In models where the constants of Nature can take more than one set of values, the cosmological wave function $\psi$ describes an ensemble of universes with different values of the constants. The probability distribution for the constants…
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…
A better understanding of the formation of large-scale structure in the Universe is arguably the most pressing question in cosmology. The most compelling and promising theoretical paradigm, Inflation + Cold Dark Matter, holds that the…
A comparison of the standard models in particle physics and in cosmology demonstrates that they are not compatible, though both are well established. Basics of modern cosmology are briefly reviewed. It is argued that the measurements of the…
Loop quantum cosmology is an application of recent developments for a non-perturbative and background independent quantization of gravity to a cosmological setting. Characteristic properties of the quantization such as discreteness of…
The established cosmological theory which describes the history of the Universe since shortly after the "Big Bang" until today is remarkably successful. Thanks to the increasing precision of available observational data, we are now able to…
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…
We explore the consequences of allowing non-Hermitian structures in quantum cosmology by extending the Wheeler DeWitt framework beyond strictly Hermitian dynamics. Using a controlled semiclassical reduction, we show how anti Hermitian…