Related papers: Constraining Quantum Initial Conditions before Inf…
In the presence of a short-distance cutoff, the choice of a vacuum state in an inflating, non-de Sitter universe is unavoidably ambiguous. The ambiguity is related to the time at which initial conditions for the mode functions are specified…
We investigate the transformation of initial conditions for primordial curvature perturbations under two types of transformations of the associated action: simultaneous redefinition of time and the field to be quantised, and the addition of…
We investigate the quantum cosmological tunneling scenario for inflationary models. Within a path-integral approach, we derive the corresponding tunneling probability distribution. A sharp peak in this distribution can be interpreted as the…
The pre-big bang scenario describes the evolution of the Universe from an initial state approaching the flat, cold, empty, string perturbative vacuum. The choice of such an initial state is suggested by the present state of our Universe if…
Recent observations about the cosmic microwave background evidence a clear discrepancy between the scale of inflation and the Planck scale expected in the conventional inflationary picture, based on simple chaotic inflationary models. This…
Cosmological inflation remains to be a unique mechanism of generation of plausible initial conditions in the early universe. In particular, it generates the primordial quasiclassical perturbations with power spectrum determined by the…
We revisit an inflationary scenario in which primordial inhomogeneities arise from a quantum collapse, a stochastic mechanism described in the context of quantum collapse theories in its continuous version and within semiclassical gravity.…
In the context of inflation, non-vacuum initial states for cosmological perturbations that possess a built in scale are studied. It is demonstrated that this assumption leads to a falsifiable class of models. The question of whether they…
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…
We present a novel approach for setting initial conditions on the mode functions of the Mukhanov Sazaki equation. These conditions are motivated by minimisation of the renormalised stress-energy tensor, and are valid for setting a vacuum…
We study the effect of a non-trivial vacuum prescription on warm inflation observables, namely the power spectrum of the comoving curvature perturbation. Non-trivial choice of vacuum, can provide information about trans-Planckian physics.…
We present cosmological constraints from Planck 2015 data for a universe that is kinetically dominated at very early times. We perform a Markov chain Monte Carlo analysis to estimate parameters and use nested sampling to determine the…
The temperature and polarization anisotropies of the Cosmic Microwave Background are analyzed under the hypothesis that the same inflationary seed accounting for protogalactic magnetism also affects the Einstein-Boltzmann hierarchy whose…
By quantizing the background as well as the perturbations in a simple one fluid cosmological model, we show that there exists an ambiguity in the choice of relevant variables, potentially leading to incompatible observational physical…
Measurements of CMB anisotropy and, more recently, polarization have played a very important role allowing precise determination of various parameters of the `standard' cosmological model. The expectation of the paradigm of inflation and…
In the context of inflationary models with a pre-inflationary stage, in which the Einstein equations are obeyed, the weak energy condition is satisfied, and spacetime topology is trivial, we argue that homogeneity on super-Hubble scales…
During inflation, primordial energy density fluctuations are created from approximate de Sitter vacuum quantum fluctuations redshifted out of the horizon after which they are frozen as perturbations in the background curvature. In this…
Given the latest observational constraints coming from the joint analyses of the Atacama Cosmology Telescope, the Planck Satellite and other missions, we point out the possibility of reconciling fundamental particle-physics models of…
We investigate the circumstances under which cosmic inflation can arise from very inhomogeneous initial conditions using numerical relativity simulations. Previous studies have not considered cases with non-zero momentum density due to…
We consider the eternal inflation scenario of the slow-roll/chaotic type with the additional element of an objective collapse of the wave function. The incorporation of this new agent to the traditional inflationary setting might represent…