Related papers: Spatial Curvature from Super-Hubble Cosmological F…
We extend our recent work on ``two-metric'' theories of gravity by showing how in such models cosmic defects can produce a spectrum of primordial Gaussian density perturbations. This will happen when the speed characterising the decay…
Inflationary theory predicts that the observable Universe should be very close to flat, with a spatial-curvature parameter |Omega_K| < 10^-4. The WMAP satellite currently constrains |Omega_K| < 0.01, and the Planck satellite will be…
Primordial fluctuations in inflationary cosmology acquire classical properties through decoherence when their wavelengths become larger than the Hubble scale. Although decoherence is effective, it is not complete, so a significant part of…
Black holes encountered in general relativity are characterized by spacetime singularities hidden within an event horizon. These singularities provide a key motivation to go beyond general relativity and look for regular black holes where…
The Hubble constant $H_0$, the current expansion rate of the universe, is one of the most important parameters in cosmology. The cosmic expansion regulates the mutually approaching motion of a pair of celestial objects due to their gravity.…
Supersymmetry plays a fundamental role in the radiative stability of many inflationary models. Spontaneous breaking of the symmetry inevitably leads to fields with masses of order the Hubble scale during inflation. When these fields couple…
We revisit the observational constraints on spatial curvature following recent claims that the Planck data favour a closed Universe. We use a new and statistically powerful Planck likelihood to show that the Planck temperature and…
Previously defined covariant and gauge-invariant perturbation variables, representing, e.g., the fractional spatial energy density gradient on hypersurfaces of constant expansion, are used to simplify the linear perturbation analysis of a…
In standard inflationary cosmology, scalar and tensor perturbations grew as the Universe expanded and froze when their wavelengths exceeded the Hubble horizon, producing a tell-tale signature in the fluctuation spectrum and amplitude of the…
The increasing precision in the determination of the Hubble parameter has reached a per cent level at which large-scale cosmic flows induced by inhomogeneities of the matter distribution become non-negligible. Here we use large-scale…
Recent observations by the Hubble Space Telescope of Cepheids in the Virgo cluster imply a Hubble Constant $H_0=80\pm17$\ km/sec/Mpc. We attempt to clarify some issues of interpretation of these results for determining the global…
We applied the theory of regularly varying functions to the analysis of the cosmological parameters for the $\Lambda$CDM model with the matter dominated evolution. Carroll et al. proved in 1992 that for this type of universe with the…
We point out a possible generation mechanism of non-Gaussian bubbles in the sky due to bubble nucleation in the early universe. We consider a curvaton scenario for inflation and assume that the curvaton field phi, whose energy density is…
We show that the vacuum energy of a free quantized field of very low mass can significantly alter the recent expansion of the universe. The effective action of the theory is obtained from a non-perturbative sum of scalar curvature terms in…
It is shown that quantum uncertainty of motion in systems controlled mainly by gravity generally grows with orbital timescale $H^{-1}$, and dominates classical motion for trajectories separated by distances less than $\approx H^{-3/5}$ in…
The dependence of cosmological and inflationary parameters on time during the last 60 e-folds in inflation is investigated using a slow-roll inflation model. The time dependence of the inflaton field is calculated for the case of chaotic…
A recently published paper by Nielsen, Guffanti and Sarkar argues that the evidence for cosmic acceleration is marginal and that a coasting universe - the Milne Universe - fits the same supernovae data in a Hubble diagram nearly as well.…
Stochastic inflation describes the global structure of the inflationary universe by modeling the super-Hubble dynamics as a system of matter fields coupled to gravity where the sub-Hubble field fluctuations induce a stochastic force into…
Gravitational and hydrodynamical perturbations are analysed in a relativistic plasma containing a mixture of interacting fluids characterized by a non-negligible bulk viscosity coefficient. The energy-momentum transfer between the…
The presence of multiple fields during inflation might seed a detectable amount of non-Gaussianity in the curvature perturbations, which in turn becomes observable in present data sets like the cosmic microwave background (CMB) or the large…