Related papers: A Quantum Complete Prelude to Inflation
Since the standard inflationary paradigm is based on quantum field theory on classical space-times, it excludes the Planck era. Using techniques from loop quantum gravity, the paradigm is extended to a self-consistent theory from the Planck…
The standard model of cosmology assumes a homogeneous and isotropic universe that undergoes a period of exponential expansion very early on, named inflation. This stretches quantum fluctuations from the onset of inflation to cosmological…
This article discusses density perturbations in inflationary models, offering a pedagogical description of how these perturbations are generated by quantum fluctuations in the early universe. A key feature of inflation is that that rapid…
It is often argued that inflation erases all the information about what took place before it started. Quantum gravity, relevant in the Planck era, seems therefore mostly impossible to probe with cosmological observations. In general, only…
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…
According to the Borde-Guth-Vilenkin (BGV) theorem an expanding region of spacetime cannot be extended to the past beyond some boundary $\mathcal{B}$. Therefore, the inflationary universe must have had some kind of beginning. However, the…
The process of quantum creation of a qusihomogeneous inflationary universe near a cosmological singularity is considered. It is shown that during the evolution quantum fluctuations of spatial topologies increase and the universe acquires…
We argue that the presence of an inflationary epoch is a natural, almost unavoidable, consequence of the existence of a sensible effective action involving an infinite tower of higher-curvature corrections to the Einstein-Hilbert action. No…
Scalar fields in theories of gravity often inhabit a moduli space of vacua, and coherent spatial or temporal variations in their expectation values can produce measurable gravitational effects. Such variations are expected in contexts…
We propose an inflationary scenario inspired by a recent formulation, in terms of coherent states, of non-commutative quantum field theory. We consider the semiclassical Einstein equations, and we exploit the ultraviolet finiteness of the…
The 2015 Planck data release tightened the region of the allowed inflationary models. Inflationary models with convex potentials have now been ruled out since they produce a large tensor to scalar ratio. Meanwhile the same data offers…
A new cosmological solution of the gravitational field equations in the generalized Randall-Sundrum model for an anisotropic brane with Bianchi I geometry and with perfect fluid as matter sources is presented. The matter is described by a…
We show that in theories of gravity that add quadratic curvature invariants to the Einstein-Hilbert action there exist expanding vacuum cosmologies with positive cosmological constant which do not approach the de Sitter universe. Exact…
We present a class of exact solutions to the constraint equations of General Relativity coupled to a Klein - Gordon field, these solutions being isotropic but not homogeneous. We analyze the subsequent evolution of the consistent Cauchy…
The evolutions of the flat FLRW universe and its linear perturbations are studied systematically in the dressed metric approach of LQC. When it is dominated by the kinetic energy of the inflaton at the quantum bounce, the evolution of the…
We discuss a novel scenario for early cosmology, when the inflationary quasi-de Sitter phase dynamically originates from the initial quantum state represented by the microcanonical density matrix. This genuine quantum effect occurs as a…
We demonstrate a spontaneous tendency of quantum wave packets to become quasi-classical, providing a classical limit for the Universe dynamics. However, this limit is not maintained in the future (after a critical value of the relational…
The evolution of a scalar field is explored taking into account the presence of a background fluid in a positively curved Universe in the framework of loop quantum cosmology. Though the mechanism that provides the initial conditions for…
We review here some recent results that show that inflationary cosmological models must contain initial singularities. We also present a new singularity theorem. The question of the initial singularity re-emerges in inflationary cosmology…
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…