Related papers: Why does inflation look single field to us?
Observations of the cosmic microwave sky are revealing the primordial non-uniformities from which all structure in the Universe grew. The only known physical mechanism for generating the inhomogeneities we see involves the amplification of…
Quantization implies independent degrees of freedom that do not appear in the classical theory, given by fluctuations, correlations, and higher moments of a state. A systematic derivation of the resulting dynamical systems is presented here…
The notion of inflation (past or present) in standard cosmological models is shown to be a consequence of a sufficiently high second law entropy production from the internal heating of the universal expansion. The longitudinal viscous…
Cosmic inflation is arguably the most favoured paradigm of the very early Universe. It postulates an early phase of fast, nearly exponential, and accelerated expansion. Inflationary models are capable of explaining the overall flatness and…
We revisit models of natural inflation and show that the single-field effective theory described by the potential $V(a)\sim \cos\frac{a}{f}$ breaks down as the inflaton $a$ makes large-field excursions, even for values of $f$ smaller than…
In the framework of a cosmological model of the Universe filled with a nonrelativistic particle soup, we easily reproduce inflation due to the quantum potential. The lightest particles in the soup serve as a driving force of this simple,…
If in a finite universe, the tree-level vacuum is a symmetric superposition of coherent states, in each of which the inflaton field assumes a different, energy-minimizing mean value (vev), then the resulting energy is positive and decreases…
We give a consistent description of how the inflationary Universe emerges in quantum cosmology. This involves two steps: Firstly, it is shown that a sensible probability peak can be obtained from the cosmological wave function. This is…
Forthcoming missions probing the absolute intensity of the CMB are expected to be able to measure spectral distortions, which are deviations from its blackbody distribution. As cosmic inflation can induce spectral distortions, these…
Cosmic Inflation provides an attractive framework for understanding the early universe and the cosmic microwave background. It can readily involve energies close to the scale at which Quantum Gravity effects become important. General…
We consider a novel model of cosmic inflation. In our model one does not need any specific matter field to drive inflation, but inflation stems from the microscopic, Planck scale structure of spacetime, thus being of quantum gravitational…
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 develop in this thesis the principles governing the production of our universe's primordial inhomogeneities during its early phase of inflation. As a guiding thread we ask what physics during inflation can lead to perturbations so large…
The standard model of cosmology is based on the hot Big Bang theory and the inflationary paradigm. Recent precise observations of the temperature and polarization anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background and the matter distribution…
Inflation offers a simple model for very early evolution of our Universe and the origin of primordial perturbations on large scales. Over the last 25 years we have become familiar with the predictions of single-field models, but inflation…
Although the paradigm of inflation has been extensively studied to demonstrate how macroscopic inhomogeneities in our universe originate from quantum fluctuations, most of the established literature ignores the crucial role that…
During inflation explicit perturbative computations of quantum field theories which contain massless, non-conformal fields exhibit secular effects that grow as powers of the logarithm of the inflationary scale factor. Starobinskii's…
We consider an inflationary scenario where the energy scale of inflation stems from gauge theory dynamics. We point out its generic implications on vacuum selection of our universe, in particular, on determination of spacetime symmetries…
We suggest a structure for the vacuum comprised of a network of tightly knotted/linked flux tubes formed in a QCD-like cosmological phase transition and show that such a network can drive cosmological inflation. As the network can be…
Due to intra-field gravitational interactions, field configurations have a strong negative component to their energy density at the planckian and transplanckian scales, conceivably resulting in a sequestration of the transplanckian field…