Related papers: How generic is eternal inflation?
Quintessential inflation provides a unified description of inflation and dark energy in terms of a single scalar degree of freedom, the cosmon. We present here a comprehensive overview of this appealing paradigm, highlighting its key…
The eternally inflating multiverse provides a consistent framework to understand coincidences and fine-tuning in the universe. As such, it provides the possibility of finding another coincidence: if the amount of slow-roll inflation was…
The idea of a multiverse -- an ensemble of universes -- has received increasing attention in cosmology, both as the outcome of the originating process that generated our own universe, and as an explanation for why our universe appears to be…
The usual theory of inflation breaks down in eternal inflation. We derive a dual description of eternal inflation in terms of a deformed Euclidean CFT located at the threshold of eternal inflation. The partition function gives the amplitude…
Recent results from cosmic microwave background (CMB) experiments verify several of the predictions of inflation, while ruling out a number of alternative structure-formation scenarios. Given the successes of the theory, the obvious next…
The early stages of the universe evolution are discussed according to the hot big bang model and the grand unified theories. The shortcomings of big bang are summarized and their resolution by inflationary cosmology is sketched.…
Cosmological inflation is discussed in the framework of $F(R,{\cal G})$ gravity where $F$ is a generic function of the curvature scalar $R$ and the Gauss-Bonnet topological invariant $\cal G$. The main feature that emerges in this analysis…
These lectures provide a pedagogical introduction to inflation and the theory of cosmological perturbations generated during inflation which are thought to be the origin of structure in the universe.
The accelerated expansion of space during the period of cosmological inflation leads to trans-Planckian issues which need to be addressed. Most importantly, the physical wavelength of fluctuations which are studied at the present time by…
The dynamics of a universe dominated by a self-interacting nonminimally coupled scalar field are considered. The structure of the phase space and complete phase portraits are given. New dynamical behaviors include superinflation…
Observable quantities in cosmology are dimensionless, and therefore independent of the units in which they are measured. This is true of all physical quantities associated with the primordial perturbations that source cosmic microwave…
The current status of early universe cosmology can be summarized as precision, but inherently limited, data requiring explanation from precision and robust theory. Specifically inflation is presently the single concrete hope for solving the…
We investigate how eternal inflation is affected by quantum gravity effects. We consider general features of quantum gravity, such as renormalizability, complementarity, minimal length, definition of observables, and weak gravity…
We investigate the measure problem in the framework of inflationary cosmology. The measure of the history space is constructed and applied to inflation models. Using this measure, it is shown that the probability for the generalized single…
In the hope of avoiding model dependence of the cosmological observables, phenomenological parametrizations of Cosmic Inflation have recently been proposed. Typically, they are expressed in terms of two parameters associated with an…
Inflation in the early Universe is one of the most promising probes of gravity in the high-energy regime. However, observable scales give access to a limited window in the inflationary dynamics. In this essay, we argue that quantum…
We apply the principles of quantum mechanics and quantum cosmology to predict probabilities for our local observations of a universe undergoing false vacuum eternal inflation. At a sufficiently fine-grained level, histories of the universe…
Swampland conjectures have attracted quite some interest in the cosmological community. They have been shown to have wide ranging implications , like constraints on inflationary models, primordial black holes, dark energy to name a few.…
WE analyse the universe inflation when the source of gravity is electromagnetic fields obeying nonlinear electrodynamics with two parameters and without singularities. The cosmology of the universe with stochastic magnetic fields is…
This article provides an introductory review of inflation and cosmological perturbation theory. I begin by motivating the need for an epoch of inflation during the early stages of the radiation dominated era, and describe how inflation is…