Related papers: Snowmass White Paper: The Cosmological Bootstrap
This article describes the theory of cosmological perturbations around a homogeneous and anisotropic universe of the Bianchi I type. Starting from a general parameterisation of the perturbed spacetime a la Bardeen, a complete set of gauge…
I explain the origin and evolution of anisotropies in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) and argue that upcoming experiments will measure cosmological and fundamental parameters very accurately. Most of the paper focuses on present data,…
We construct a 2+1 dimensional spacetime of constant curvature whose spatial topology is that of a torus with one asymptotic region attached. It is also a black hole whose event horizon spins with respect to infinity. An observer entering…
These lecture notes aim to provide a pedagogical introduction to the AdS/CFT correspondence and its extensions to spacetimes with positive (de Sitter spacetime) and zero (flat spacetime) cosmological constant. We begin by explaining the…
We perform a detailed analysis of the latest CMB measurements (including BOOMERaNG, DASI, Maxima and CBI), both alone and jointly with other cosmological data sets involving, e.g., galaxy clustering and the Lyman Alpha Forest. We first…
The mathematical theory of isometric embedding is applied to study the notion of quasilocal mass in general relativity. In particular, I shall report some recent progress of quasilocal mass with reference to a cosmological spacetime, such…
KKLT give a mechanism to generate de Sitter vacua in string theory. And recently, the scenario, {\em landscape}, is suggested to explain the problem of the cosmological constant. In this scenario, the cosmological constant is a de Sitter…
We revisit spatially flat, anisotropic cosmologies within the framework of mini-superspace. Putting special emphasis on the symmetries of the mini-superspace action and on the associated conservation laws, we unveil a new class of rotating…
We provide a cosmological implementation of the evolutionary quantum gravity, describing an isotropic Universe, in the presence of a negative cosmological constant and a massive (preinflationary) scalar field. We demonstrate that the…
We propose to use a simple observable, the fractional area of "hot spots" in weak gravitational lensing mass maps which are detected with high significance, to determine background cosmological parameters. Because these high-convergence…
I show that the de Sitter Equilibrium cosmology generically predicts observable levels of curvature in the Universe today. The predicted value of the curvature depends only on the ratio of the density of non-relativistic matter to energy…
We present and discuss an asynchronous coordinate system covering de Sitter spacetime, notably in a complete way in 1+1 dimensions. The new coordinates have several interesting cosmological properties: the worldlines of comoving…
We are learning much about how structure forms, in particular how clusters as nodes in the cosmic web evolve and accrete matter, and about the physical processes within these objects. In the next decade, the study of clusters will enable us…
Modern cosmology is based on the cosmological principle, which states that the Universe is statistically homogeneous and isotropic. When applied in its strict -- rather than statistical -- sense, the cosmological principle leads to the…
We investigate Whitehead's asphericity question from a new perspective, using results and techniques of the homotopy theory of finite topological spaces. We also introduce a method of reduction to investigate asphericity based on the…
There are at least two cosmological constants calling for explanation. The first one describes the quasi-de Sitter inflation in the early universe, and the second describes the current acceleration of the universe associated with dark…
In the last decade, the study of the overall shape of the universe, called Cosmic Topology, has become testable by astronomical observations, especially the data from the Cosmic Microwave Background (hereafter CMB) obtained by WMAP and…
A companion paper provides a proposal for cosmic singularity resolution based upon general features of a bouncing unitary cosmological model in the mini-superspace approximation. This paper analyses novel phenomenology that can be…
We study a cosmological scenario in which inflation is preceded by a bounce. In this scenario, the primordial singularity, one of the major shortcomings of inflation, is replaced by a non-singular bounce, prior to which the universe…
Focusing on the well motivated aperture mass statistics $\Map$, we study the possibility of constraining cosmological parameters using future space based SNAP class weak lensing missions. Using completely analytical results we construct the…