Related papers: Eternal inflation and collapse theories
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…
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.…
This thesis is dedicated to studying cosmological inflation, which is a period of accelerated expansion in the very early Universe that is required to explain the observed anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background. Inflation, when…
According to cosmological inflation, the inhomogeneities in our universe are of quantum mechanical origin. This scenario is phenomenologically very appealing as it solves the puzzles of the standard hot big bang model and naturally explains…
Inflation plays a central role in our current understanding of the universe. According to the standard viewpoint, the homogeneous and isotropic mode of the inflaton field drove an early phase of nearly exponential expansion of the universe,…
Attempts to apply quantum collapse theories to Cosmology and cosmic inflation are reviewed. These attempts are motivated by the fact that the theory of cosmological perturbations of quantum-mechanical origin suffers from the single outcome…
As previously discussed in (D. Sudarsky, Int.J.Mod.Phys.D20:509-552, (2011); [arXiv:0906.0315]), the inflationary account for the emergence of the seeds of cosmic structure falls short of actually explaining the generation of primordial…
The emergence of the seeds of cosmic structure, from a perfect isotropic and homogeneous Universe, has not been clearly explained by the standard version of inflationary models as the dynamics involved preserve the homogeneity and isotropy…
Inflation is considered one of the cornerstones of modern cosmology. However, the account of the origin of cosmic structure, as provided by the standard inflationary paradigm, is not fully satisfactory. The fundamental issue is the…
Cosmological inflation, if it occurred, radically alters the picture of the `big bang', which would merely point to reheating at the end of inflation. Moreover, this reheating may be only local, so that inflation continues elsewhere and…
The basic workings of inflationary models are summarized, along with the arguments that strongly suggest that our universe is the product of inflation. I describe the quantum origin of density perturbations, giving a heuristic derivation of…
In a previous paper we proposed a new approach to the beginning of inflation -- a lingering universe. The universe begins in a lingering state with a nearly vanishing Hubble parameter. This calls into question the absolute age of the…
It has been widely claimed that inflation is generically eternal to the future, even in models where the inflaton potential monotonically increases away from its minimum. The idea is that quantum fluctuations allow the field to jump uphill,…
On the one hand, inflation is an extremely convincing scenario: it solves most cosmological paradoxes and generates fluctuations that became the seeds for the growth of structures. It, however, suffers from a "naturalness" problem:…
In this work we consider a wide variety of alternatives opened when applying the continuous spontaneous localization (CSL) dynamical collapse theory to the inflationary era. The definitive resolution of many of the issues discussed here…
At the level of heuristic effective dynamics, we investigate the cosmological inflation with holonomy corrections of loop quantum cosmology (LQC) in the $k=0$ Friedmann-Robertson-Walker model with a single inflaton field subject to a simple…
Cosmic inflation, which describes an accelerated expansion of the early Universe, yields the most successful predictions regarding temperature anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background (CMB). Nevertheless, the precise origin of the…
Inflation, a period of exponential expansion in the early Universe, is considered an important part of the standard $\Lambda$CDM cosmological model, and plays a crucial role in explaining a wide range of current observations. The standard…
Inflation creates large-scale cosmological density perturbations that are characterized by an isotropic, homogeneous, and Gaussian random distribution about a locally flat background. Even in a flat universe, the spatial curvature measured…
Slow-roll inflation can become eternal if the quantum variance of the inflaton field around its slowly rolling classical trajectory is converted into a distribution of classical spacetimes inflating at different rates, and if the variance…