Related papers: Primordial Non-Gaussianity
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…
An introduction to modern theories for the origin of structure in the Universe is given. After a brief review of the growth of cosmological perturbations in an expanding Universe and a summary of some important observational results, the…
The non-Gaussian distribution of primordial perturbations has the potential to reveal the physical processes at work in the very early Universe. Local models provide a well-defined class of non-Gaussian distributions that arise naturally…
Gravitational lensing of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) encodes cosmological information in the observed anisotropies of temperature and polarization. Accurate extraction of this additional information requires precise modeling of…
We study signatures in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) induced by the presence of strong spatial curvature prior to the epoch of inflation which generated our present universe. If inflation does not last sufficiently long to drive the…
Observational tests during the next decade may determine if the evolution of the Universe can be understood from fundamental physical principles, or if special initial conditions, coincidences, and new, untestable physical laws must be…
The early universe provides an opportunity for quantum gravity to connect to observation by explaining the large-scale structure of the Universe. In the group field theory (GFT) approach, a macroscopic universe is described as a GFT…
Super-high energy corpuscular and gamma rays as well as cosmic high--power density sources are hard to explain in a galaxy model framework. Attempts to include some of those phenomena in the Standard Cosmological Model also encounter…
Probing Gaussianity represents one of the key questions in modern cosmology, because it allows to discriminate between different models of inflation. We test for large-scale non-Gaussianities in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) in a…
These lectures deal with our current knowledge of the matter distribution in the universe, focusing on how this is studied via the large-scale structure seen in galaxy surveys. We first assemble the necessary basics needed to understand the…
The expansion of our universe, when followed backward in time, implies that it emerged from a phase of huge density, the big bang. These stages are so extreme that classical general relativity combined with matter theories is not able to…
Focus of these lectures is the challenge of explaining the origin of structure in the Universe. The interplay between quantum field theory and classical general relativity has given rise to several interesting cosmological models which…
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…
Cosmic inflation may have led to non-Gaussian initial conditions that cannot be fully parametrised by 3- and/or 4-point functions. In this work, we discuss various strategies to search for primordial non-Gaussianity beyond polyspectra with…
Classical and quantum gravitational instabilities, can, respectively, inflate and warm up a primordial Universe satisfying a superstring-motivated principle of "Asymptotic Past Triviality". A physically viable big bang is thus generated…
In these lectures I review the present status of the so-called Standard Cosmological Model, based on the hot Big Bang Theory and the Inflationary Paradigm. I will make special emphasis on the recent developments in observational cosmology,…
The cosmic microwave background (CMB) provides a snapshot of the early Universe when matter began to become structured and has been the focus of several recent observational campaigns. In this Perspective, we discuss the results from these…
We give an account, at non-expert and quantitative level, of physics behind the CMB temperature anisotropy and polarization and their peculiar features. We discuss, in particular, how cosmological parameters are determined from the CMB…
Any hint of non-gaussianity in the cosmological initial conditions will provide us with a unique window into the physics of early universe. We show that the impact of a small local primordial non-gaussianity (generated on super-horizon…
We study the behavior of n-point functions of the primordial curvature perturbations, assuming our observed Universe is only a subset of a larger space with statistically homogeneous and isotropic perturbations. If the larger space has…