Related papers: The Axidental Universe
Observations indicate that the universe is effectively flat, but they do not rule out a closed universe. The role of positive curvature is negligible at late times, but can be crucial in the early universe. In particular, positive curvature…
Constraints on inflationary scenarios and isocurvature perturbations have excluded the simplest and most generic models of dark matter based on QCD axions. Considering non-minimal kinetic couplings of scalar fields to gravity substantially…
Generalised axion-like scalar fields provide a well-motivated framework for describing the late-time acceleration of the Universe. As the field evolves, it rolls down its potential and, depending on its mass and initial conditions, it may…
Natural (axionic) inflation provides a well-motivated and predictive scheme for the description of the early universe. It leads to sizeable primordial tensor modes and thus a high mass scale of the inflationary potential. Naively this seems…
We speculate that the early Universe was inside a primordial black hole. The interior of the the black hole is a dS background and the two spacetimes are separated on the surface of black hole's event horizon. We argue that this picture…
We show that inflation with a quadratic potential occurs naturally in theories where an axion-like field mixes with a 4-form. Such an axion is massive, with the mass which arises from the mixing being protected by the axion shift symmetry.…
A near-Milne Universe produces a very red spectrum of vacuum quantum fluctuations, but has the potential to produce near-scale invariant {\it thermal} fluctuations. This happens if the energy and entropy are mildly sub-extensive, for…
We show that current cosmic acceleration can be explained by an almost massless scalar field experiencing quantum fluctuations during primordial inflation. Provided its mass does not exceed the Hubble parameter today, this field has been…
The axion is a hypothetical, well-motivated dark-matter particle whose existence would explain the lack of charge-parity violation in the strong interaction. In addition to this original motivation, an `axiverse' of ultra-light axions…
One of the prime pieces of evidence for dark matter is the observation of large overdense regions in the universe. Since we know from the cosmic microwave background that the regions that contained the most baryons when the universe was…
Topologically protected sheet-like surfaces, called domain walls, form when the potential of a field has a discrete symmetry that is spontaneously broken. Since this condition is commonplace in field theory, it is plausible that many of…
The recent BICEP2 result shows that the Universe once has gone through the vacuum with the GUT scale energy density. The implied high scale inflation nullifies the dilution idea of topological defects, strings and domain walls, of the…
We describe how cosmology has converged towards a beautiful model of the Universe: the Big Bang Universe. We praise this model, but show there is a dark side to it. This dark side is usually called ``the cosmological problems'': a set of…
Scalar fields in the minimal supersymmetric standard model may have large field values during inflation. Because of approximate global symmetry, it is plausible that the phase directions of them are nearly massless during inflation and…
In this paper we consider a new approach to unify inflation and the late universe with dark energy and dark matter formulated in a model that includes a non-Riemannian metric independent measure and a scalar field with spontaneously broken…
A number of proposed and ongoing experiments search for axion dark matter with a mass nearing the limit set by small scale structure (${\cal O} ( 10 ^{ - 21 } {\rm eV} ) $). We consider the late universe cosmology of these models, showing…
We discuss a cosmological model where the universe shrinks rather than expands during the radiation and matter dominated periods. Instead, the Planck mass and all particle masses grow exponentially, with the size of atoms shrinking…
A model of the Universe as a mixture of a scalar (inflaton or rolling tachyon from the string theory) and a matter field (classical particles) is analyzed. The particles are created at the expense of the gravitational energy through an…
Within the framework of an eternal inflationary scenario, a natural question regarding the production of eternal bubbles is the essential condition requires to have a universe capable of generating life. In either an open or a closed…
Axion-like particles are a well-motivated dark matter candidate that can form a condensate with low momentum and high occupation number. In the presence of dark radiation, this condensate loses energy, naturally increasing the energy…