Related papers: Is Planckian discreteness observable in cosmology?
Predictions from early universe cosmology typically concern primordial perturbations generated during epochs where effects arising from the quantum nature of gravity may be important; quantum vacuum fluctuations being stretched to…
The gravitational dynamics and cosmological implications of three classes of recently introduced multi-scale spacetimes (with, respectively, ordinary, weighted and q-derivatives) are discussed. These spacetimes are non-Riemannian: the…
It has been suggested that by increasing the speed of light during the early universe various cosmological problems of standard big bang cosmology can be overcome, without requiring an inflationary phase. However, we find that as the Planck…
The particle production process is reviewed, through which cosmic inflation can produce a scale invariant superhorizon spectrum of perturbations of suitable fields starting from their quantum fluctuations. Afterwards, in the context of the…
A new class of gravity-matter models defined in terms of two independent non-Riemannian volume forms (alternative generally covariant integration measure densities) on the space-time manifold are studied in some detail. These models involve…
Quantum gravity, as a fundamental theory of space-time, is expected to reveal how the universe may have started, perhaps during or before an inflationary epoch. It may then leave a potentially observable (but probably minuscule) trace in…
At Planck-scale, spacetime is "foamy" due to quantum fluctuations predicted by quantum gravity. Here we consider the possibility of using spacetime foam-induced phase incoherence of light from distant galaxies and gamma-ray bursters to…
The article addresses a possibility of obtaining cosmologically relevant effects from the quantum nature of the Hubble horizon. Following the observation made by E.~Bianchi and C.~Rovelli in Phys.\ Rev.\ D {\bf 84} (2011) 027502 we explore…
A macroscopic universe may emerge naturally from a Planck cell fluctuation by unfolding through a stage of exponential expansion towards a homogeneous cosmological background. Such primordial inflation requires a large and presumably…
In these lectures the present status of the so-called standard cosmological model, based on the hot Big Bang theory and the inflationary paradigm is reviewed. Special emphasis is given to the origin of the cosmological perturbations we see…
In inflationary cosmological models driven by an inflaton field the origin of the primordial inhomogeneities which are responsible for large scale structure formation are the quantum fluctuations of the inflaton field. These are usually…
For two decades the hot big-bang model as been referred to as the standard cosmology -- and for good reason. For just as long cosmologists have known that there are fundamental questions that are not answered by the standard cosmology and…
We show that it is possible to combine an early phase of String Gas Cosmology which can explain the origin of the observed structures on cosmological scales with a short later period of power law inflation which creates spatial flatness.…
The accelerated expansion of space during the period of cosmological inflation leads to trans-Planckian issues which need to be addressed. Most importantly, the physical wavelength of fluctuations which are studied at the present time by…
This is a review of particle-theory models of inflation, and of their predictions for the primordial density perturbation that is thought to be the origin of structure in the Universe. It contains mini-reviews of the relevant observational…
In the past decade, the importance of dissipation and fluctuation to inflationary dynamics has been realized and has led to a new picture of inflation called warm inflation. Although these phenomena are common to condensed matter systems,…
The probability of there being sufficient inflation to solve the fine-tuning associated with the horizon and flatness problems has recently been shown to be exponentially small, within the context of classical general relativity. Here this…
Over the past three years we have determined the basic features of our Universe. It is spatially flat; accelerating; comprised of 1/3 a new form of matter, 2/3 a new form of energy, with some ordinary matter and a dash of massive neutrinos;…
We consider classically scale-invariant theories with non-minimally coupled scalar fields, where the Planck mass and the hierarchy of physical scales are dynamically generated. The classical theories possess a fixed point, where scale…
Quantum field theory, which is generally used to describe the origin of large-scale gravitational perturbations during cosmic inflation, has been shown to omit an important physical effect in curved space-time, the nonlocal entanglement…