Related papers: Constraining Quantum Initial Conditions before Inf…
The solution to large-scale power deficit in the cosmic microwave background fluctuations may be relevant with the physics in the preinflationry period, and significantly depends on whether the initial conditions are set as Bunch-Davies…
By quantising the background as well as the perturbations in a simple one fluid model, we show that there exists an ambiguity in the choice of relevant variables, potentially leading to incompatible observational physical predictions. In a…
Oscillating massive fields in the primordial universe can be used as Standard Clocks. The ticks of these oscillations induce features in the density perturbations, which directly record the time evolution of the scale factor of the…
We consider the question of deriving initial conditions for scalar fields in driving both an early and late quintessence phase. The dark energy field presents an unresolved uniformity problem. Further difficulties with initial conditions…
Inflationary cosmology has proved to be the most successful at predicting the properties of the anisotropies observed in the cosmic microwave background (CMB). In this essay we show that quantum field renormalization significantly…
Cosmic inflation provides a window to the highest energy densities accessible in nature, far beyond those achievable in any realistic terrestrial experiment. Theoretical insights into the inflationary era and its observational probes may…
Determining the initial state of the universe is a challenging problem in quantum cosmology and we argue that the issue is intractable if the basic postulates of quantum mechanics are not modified in a nontrivial way. Namely a "standard"…
We calculate how primordial anisotropies in the background space-time affect the evolution of cosmological perturbations for bouncing alternatives to inflation, like ekpyrosis and the matter bounce scenario. We find that the leading order…
Standard Clocks in the primordial epoch leave a special type of features in the primordial perturbations, which can be used to directly measure the scale factor of the primordial universe as a function of time a(t), thus discriminating…
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…
In the last few decades, advances in observational cosmology have given us a standard model of cosmology. We know the content of the universe to within a few percent. With more ambitious experiments on the way, we hope to move beyond the…
In this paper we put forward the idea that the comoving Hubble horizon undergoes multiple stages of contraction (a.k.a. inflationary phase) and expansion. The observable inflation, that produces the CMB anisotropies and generates primordial…
Inflation provides a natural mechanism to account for the origin of cosmic structures. The generation of primordial inhomogeneities during inflation can be understood via the spontaneous creation of quanta from the vacuum. We show that when…
We propose a cosmological lingering phase for the initial state prior to inflation which would help address the singularity problem of inflation. The universe begins with a constant (Hagedorn) temperature and then transitions into an…
We propose an inflationary primordial feature model that can explain both the large and small-scale anomalies in the currently measured cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropy spectra, revealing a clip of adventurous history of the…
Two different predictions for the primordial curvature fluctuation bispectrum are compared through their effects on the Cosmic Microwave Background temperature fluctuations. The first has a local form described by a single parameter f_{NL}.…
We show that inflationary cosmology may be used to test the statistical predictions of quantum theory at very short distances and at very early times. Hidden-variables theories, such as the pilot-wave theory of de Broglie and Bohm, allow…
Many models of the early universe predict that there should be primordial tensor perturbations. These leave an imprint into the temperature and polarisation anisotropies of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). The differential equation…
In this paper we consider realistic model of inflation embedded in the framework of loop quantum cosmology. Phase of inflation is preceded here by the phase of a quantum bounce. We show how parameters of inflation depend on the initial…
Inflation provides a unified paradigm for understanding the isotropy of the cosmic microwave background (CMB), the flatness problem, and the origin of large-scale structure. Although the physics responsible for inflation is not yet well…