Related papers: Echoes from a long time ago: Chewbacca inflation
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…
We forecast the scientific capabilities to improve our understanding of cosmic inflation of CORE, a proposed CMB space satellite submitted in response to the ESA fifth call for a medium-size mission opportunity. The CORE satellite will map…
Cosmic inflation is the cornerstone of modern cosmology. In particular, following the Planck mission reports presented in 2015 regarding cosmic microwave background (CMB), there is an increasing interest in searching for inflaton candidates…
There is an apparent power deficit relative to the Lambda-CDM prediction of the CMB spectrum at large scales, which, though not yet statistically significant, persists from WMAP to Planck data. We first present a simple toy model…
One of the most spectacular scientific breakthroughs in past decades was using measurements of the fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) to test precisely our understanding of the history and composition of the Universe.…
We describe the implications of cosmic microwave background (CMB) observations and galaxy and cluster surveys of large scale structure (LSS) for theories of cosmic structure formation, especially emphasizing the recent Boomerang and Maxima…
Recent Planck measurements show some CMB anomalies on large angular scales, which confirms the early observations by WMAP. We show that an inflationary model, in which before the slow-roll inflation the Universe is in a superinflationary…
The cosmic microwave background (CMB) traveled the cosmos long before it reached our telescopes today. Consequently, it is one of the best probes of fundamental processes in the early Universe that we could hope to observe. The cosmological…
This set of lectures provides an overview of the basic theory and phenomenology of the cosmic microwave background. Topics include a brief historical review; the physics of temperature and polarization fluctuations; acoustic oscillations of…
In this review I consider several different issues related to inflation. I will begin with the wave function of the Universe. This issue is pretty old, but recently there were some new insights based on the theory of the self-reproducing…
The observed power spectrum of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) is consistent with inflationary cosmology, which predicts a nearly scale-invariant power spectrum of quantum fluctuations of the inflaton field as they exit the Hubble…
The conventional $\Lambda$CDM cosmological model supplemented by the inflation concept describes the Universe very well. However, there are still a few concerns: new Planck data impose constraints on the shape of the inflaton potential,…
It is commonly assumed that the stochastic background of gravitational waves on cosmological scales follows an almost scale-independent power spectrum, as generically predicted by the inflationary paradigm. However, it is not inconceivable…
The universe might experience many cycles with different vacua. The slow-roll inflation may be preceded by kinetic-dominated contraction occurring in "adjacent" vacua during some cycles. In this report we briefly show this phenomenon may…
We investigate the spectrum of cosmological perturbations in a bounce cosmos modeled by a scalar field coupled to the string tachyon field (CSTB cosmos). By explicit computation of its primordial spectral index we show the power spectrum of…
We analyze the temperature three--point correlation function and the skewness of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), providing general relations in terms of multipole coefficients. We then focus on applications to large angular scale…
With an energy scale that can be as high as $10^{14}\,{\rm GeV}$, inflation may provide a unique probe of high-energy physics. Both scalar and tensor fluctuations generated during this early accelerated expansion contain crucial information…
In most inflationary models, space-time inflated to the extent that modes of cosmological size originated as modes of wavelengths at least several orders of magnitude smaller than the Planck length. Recent studies confirmed that, therefore,…
Measurements of Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) anisotropy have served as the best experimental probe of the early universe to date. The inflationary paradigm, inspired in part by the extreme isotropy of the CMB, is now a cornerstone in…
A scenario with two subsequent periods of inflationary expansion in the very early universe is examined. The model is based on a potential motivated by symmetries being found in field theory at high energy. For various parameter sets of the…