Related papers: Topological Gravity as the Early Phase of Our Univ…
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 early history of the universe might be described by a topological phase followed by a standard second phase of Einstein gravity. To study this scenario in its full generality, we consider a four-manifold of Euclidean signature in the…
It is argued that quantum gravity has an interpretation as a topological field theory provided a certain constraint from the path intergral measure is respected. The constraint forces us to couple gauge and matter fields to gravity for…
A cubic correction of $f(T)$ gravity, where $T$ is the teleparallel scalar torsion, is considered to describe gravity in spatially flat Friedmann-Robertson-Walker model. A scale factor permitting departure from inflation era has been…
We propose that at the beginning of the universe gravity existed in a limbo either because it was switched off or because it was only conformally coupled to all particles. This picture can be reverse-engineered from the requirement that the…
A model of topological field theory is presented in which the vacuum coupling constants are topological invariants of the four-dimensional spacetime. Thus the coupling constants are theoretically computable, and they indicate the…
Scalar-tensor theories of gravity that embrace conformal coupling to the scalar curvature are the focal point of cosmology on discussions of inflation and late-time accelerating universe. Although there exists a stringent nucleo-synthesis…
We study the origin of the universe (or pre-inflation) by suggesting that the primordial space-time in the universe suffered a global topological phase transition, from a 4D Euclidean manifold to an asymptotic 4D hyperbolic one. We…
We construct cubic gravity and its $f(P)$ extension and we investigate their early- and late-time cosmological applications. Cubic gravity is based on a particular invariant $P$, constructed from cubic contractions of the Riemann tensor,…
The accepted idea that the expansion of the universe is accelerating needs, for compatibility to general relativity, the introduction of some unusual forms of matter. However, several authors have proposed that instead of making weird…
Gravity is a non-linear theory, and hence, barring cancellations, the initial super-horizon perturbations produced by inflation must contain some minimum amount of mode coupling, or primordial non-Gaussianity. In single-field slow-roll…
We derive the primordial power spectrum of density fluctuations in the framework of quantum cosmology. For this purpose we perform a Born-Oppenheimer approximation to the Wheeler-DeWitt equation for an inflationary universe with a scalar…
For variable gravity models the strength of gravity, as measured by Newton's ``constant'' or the Planck mass, depends on the value of a scalar field, the cosmon. We discuss two simple four-parameter models with a quadratic or constant…
The recently suggested generalized unimodular gravity theory, which was originally put forward as a model of dark energy, can serve as a model of cosmological inflation driven by the effective perfect fluid -- the dark purely gravitational…
The leading candidate for the very early universe is described by a period of rapid expansion known as inflation. While the standard paradigm invokes a single slow-rolling field, many different models may be constructed which fit the…
We propose an evolutional scenario of the universe which starts from quantum states with conformal invariance, passing through the inflationary era, and then makes transition to the conventional Einstein space-time. The space-time dynamics…
A novel primordial spectrum with a dynamical scale of quantum gravity origin is proposed to explain the sharp fall off of the angular power spectra at low multipoles in the COBE and WMAP observations. The spectrum is derived from quantum…
A central aspect of the cosmological constant problem is to understand why vacuum energy does not gravitate. In order to account for this observation, while allowing for nontrivial dynamics of the quantum vacuum, we motivate a novel…
We present a new picture of the early universe in finite nonlocal quantum gravity, which is Weyl invariant at the classical and quantum levels. The high-energy regime of the theory consists of two phases, a Weyl invariant trans-Planckian…
Four-dimensional gravity admits many equivalent formulations - metric, Einstein-Cartan, teleparallel, McDowell-Mansouri, among others - each offering distinct advantages, particularly, in view of quantization. We propose a new formulation…