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The production of a background of super-horizon curvature perturbations with the appropriate (red) spectrum needed to trigger the cosmic anisotropies observed on large scales is associated, in the context of pre-big bang inflation, with a…
In spite of the phenomenological successes of the inflationary universe scenario, the current realizations of inflation making use of scalar fields lead to serious conceptual problems which are reviewed in this lecture. String theory may…
We propose a new method for identifying new physics imprints on present observational data in cosmology whereby signatures of string theory are clearly distinguished from imprints of possible features on the inflaton potential. Our method…
Attempts to connect string theory with astrophysical observation are hampered by a jargon barrier, where an intimidating profusion of orientifolds, Kahler potentials, etc. dissuades cosmologists from attempting to work out the astrophysical…
The theory of cosmological fluctuations assumes that the pre-inflationary state of the universe was the quantum vacuum of a scalar field(s) coupled to gravity. The observed cosmic microwave background fluctuations are then interpreted as…
Supersymmetric theories, including the minimal supersymmetric standard model, usually contain many scalar fields whose potentials are absent in the exact supersymmetric limit and within the renormalizable level. Since their potentials are…
A particularly attractive feature of inflation is that quantum fluctuations in the inflaton field may have seeded inhomogeneities in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) and the formation of large-scale structure. In this paper, we…
We present a new approach to early universe cosmology. Inflation is replaced by a phase transition in which both matter and geometry are created simultaneously. We calculate the spectrum of metric perturbations and show that it is flat. We…
The theory of cosmological perturbations is the main tool which connects theories of the early universe (based on new fundamental physics such as string theory) with cosmological observations. In these lectures, I will provide an…
Inflation, a period of exponential expansion in the early Universe, is considered an important part of the standard $\Lambda$CDM cosmological model, and plays a crucial role in explaining a wide range of current observations. The standard…
The epoch when the Universe had a temperature higher than a GeV is long before any time at which we have reliable observations constraining the cosmological evolution. For example, the occurrence of a second burst of inflation (sometimes…
Seiberg and Witten have shown that the non-perturbative stability of string physics on conformally compactified spacetimes is related to the behaviour of the areas and volumes of certain branes as the brane is moved towards infinity. If, as…
Inflation may have been driven by a component which violated the Null-Energy Condition, thereby leading to {\it super inflation}. We provide the formalism to study cosmological perturbations when such a component is described by a scalar…
Tribrid inflation is a class of supersymmetric inflation models where the scalar component of a matter superfield, or a $D$-flat direction of matter fields, drives inflation. Similar to Hybrid inflation, the end of inflation is reached when…
In the inflationary universe scenario, the physical wavelength of cosmological fluctuation modes which are currently probed in observations was shorter than the Hubble radius, and in fact shorter than the Planck and string lengths, at the…
A brief account is given of large-scale structure modelling based on the assumption that the initial perturbations arise from inflation. A recap is made of the implications of inflation for large-scale structure; under the widely applicable…
Using numerical solutions of the full Einstein field equations coupled to a scalar inflaton field in 3+1 dimensions, we study the conditions under which a universe that is initially expanding, highly inhomogeneous and dominated by gradient…
We consider inflation in a universe with a positive cosmological constant and a nonminimally coupled scalar field, in which the field couples both quadratically and quartically to the Ricci scalar. When considered in the Einstein frame and…
In spite of the phenomenological successes of the inflationary universe scenario, the current realizations of inflation making use of scalar fields lead to serious conceptual problems which are reviewed in this lecture. String theory may…
Attempts at building an unified description of the strong, weak and electromagnetic interactions usually involve several stages of spontaneous symmetry breaking. We consider the effects of such symmetry breaking during an era of primordial…