Related papers: An Entangled Universe
Structure in the Universe is widely believed to have originated from quantum fluctuations during an early epoch of accelerated expansion. Yet, the patterns we observe today do not distinguish between quantum or classical primordial…
We study the photon-graviton pair production induced by the propagation of a classical electromagnetic (EM) wave in a Minkowskian spacetime. In our model, the gravitational field is described in terms of the quantized graviton field,…
Two extensions of ideas lying in the basis of the inflationary scenario of the early Universe and their effect on the large scale structure of the present-day Universe are discussed. The first of them is the possibility of fast phase…
The Universe may pass through an effectively matter-dominated epoch between inflation and Big Bang Nucleosynthesis during which gravitationally bound structures can form on subhorizon scales. In particular, the inflaton field can collapse…
Inflationary cosmology proposes that the early Universe undergoes accelerated expansion, driven, in simple scenarios, by a single scalar field, or inflaton. The form of the inflaton potential determines the initial spectra of density…
It is sometimes argued that observation of tensor modes from inflation would provide the first evidence for quantum gravity. However, in the usual inflationary formalism, also the scalar modes involve quantised metric perturbations. We…
Oscillons are massive, long-lived, localized excitations of a scalar field. We show that in a large class of well-motivated single-field models, inflation is followed by self-resonance, leading to copious oscillon generation and a lengthy…
The (large-scale) structures we observe in the Universe are classical, but within the inflationary scenario they do originate from quantum fluctuations. This leads to the question: ''How did this quantum-to-classical transition occur?''. A…
We consider an inflationary kinetic function with an integrable pole that is traversed during inflation. This scenario leads to enhanced spectra of primordial scalar inhomogeneities with detectable signals: formation of primordial black…
Inflationary cosmology successfully accounts for the observed properties of primordial fluctuations using quantum field theory in an expanding background. However, the quantum nature of these fluctuations has not been experimentally…
We study the possibility that particle production during inflation could source observable gravity waves on scales relevant for Cosmic Microwave Background experiments. A crucial constraint on such scenarios arises because particle…
It is now widely believed that if the gravitational field is (perturbatively) quantum, it would entangle two massive objects (in spatial superpositions) which were otherwise unentangled to begin with. Recently, actual table-top experiments…
The standard inflationary version of the origin of the cosmic structure as the result of the quantum fluctuations during the inflationary stage is less than fully satisfactory: how exactly does the Universe transit from a homogeneous and…
In order to draw out the essential behavior of the universe, investigations of early universe cosmology often reduce the complex system to a simple integrable system. Inflationary models are of this kind as they focus on simple scalar field…
We study the entanglement entropy resulting from tracing out local degrees of freedom of a quantum scalar field in an expanding universe. It is known that when field modes become superhorizon during inflation they evolve to increasingly…
We revisit the study of the phenomenology associated to a burst of particle production of a field whose mass is controlled by the inflaton field and vanishes at one given instance during inflation. This generates a bump in the correlators…
We explore the cosmological consequences of having the fluctuations of the inflaton field entangled with those of another scalar, within the context of a toy model consisting of non-interacting, minimally coupled scalars in a fixed de…
The determination of the inflationary energy scale represents one of the first step towards the understanding of the early Universe physics. The (very mild) non-Gaussian signals that arise from any inflation model carry information about…
Detailed measurements of the cosmic microwave background indicate the large-scale homogeneity of the universe. On very small scales, we observe however inhomogeneities such as galaxies, stars, planets and ourselves. In the context of hot…
We present a model of inflation where the inflaton is accommodated as a phantom field which exhibits an initial transient pole behavior and then decays into a quintessence field which is responsible for a radiation era. We must stress that…