Related papers: Dual Inflation and Bounce Cosmologies Interpretati…
It is widely accepted that the primordial universe experienced a brief period of accelerated expansion called inflation. This scenario provides a plausible solution to the horizon and flatness problems. However, the particle physics…
One of the major predictions of inflation is the existence of a stochastic background of cosmological gravitational waves (GW). These gravitational waves can induce significant temperature anisotropies in the Cosmic Microwave Background…
This is a review of models of inflation and of their predictions for the primordial non-Gaussianity in the density perturbations which are thought to be at the origin of structures in the Universe. Non-Gaussianity emerges as a key…
In inflation cosmologies, cosmic structure develops through the gravitational instability of the inevitable quantum noise in primordial scalar fields. I show how the acceleration of the universe defines the shape of the primordial spectrum…
We consider the inflationary universe with a spectator scalar field coupled to a $U(1)$ gauge field and calculate curvature perturbation and gravitational waves (GWs). We find that the sourced GWs can be larger than the one from vacuum…
Motivated by the recent release of new results from five different pulsar timing array (PTA) experiments claiming to have found compelling evidence for primordial gravitational waves (GW) at nano-Hz frequencies, we consider the prospects of…
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.…
We review an inflationary scenario with the anisotropic expansion rate. An anisotropic inflationary universe can be realized by a vector field coupled with an inflaton, which can be regarded as a counter example to the cosmic no-hair…
Cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropy may result from both scalar and tensor perturbations. For a sufficiently narrow range of angular scales, CMB perturbations can be characterized by four parameters. Results from the Cosmic…
Inflationary cosmology provides a natural mechanism for the generation of primordial perturbations which seed the formation of observed cosmic structure and lead to specific signals of anisotropy in the cosmic microwave background…
Oscillating massive fields in the primordial universe can be used as Standard Clocks. The ticks of these oscillations induce features in the density perturbations, which directly record the time evolution of the scale factor of the…
We perform a detailed investigation of the simplest possible cosmological model in which a bounce can occur, namely that where the dynamics is led by a simple massive scalar field in a general self-interacting potential and a background…
The characteristics of the cosmic microwave background provide circumstantial evidence that the hot radiation-dominated epoch in the early universe was preceded by a period of inflationary expansion. Here, we show how a measurement of the…
We derive all single-field cosmologies with unit sound speed that generate scale invariant curvature perturbations on a dynamical attractor background. We identify three distinct phases: slow-roll inflation; a slowly contracting adiabatic…
Space-based missions studying the cosmic microwave background (CMB) have progressively refined the parameter space in conventional models of inflation shortly ($\sim 10^{-37}$ seconds) after the big bang. While most inflationary scenarios…
We propose a method to extract predictions from quantum cosmology for inflation that can be confronted with observations. Employing the tunneling boundary condition in quantum geometrodynamics, we derive a probability distribution for the…
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…
We investigate the stochastic gravitational wave background (SGWB) from cosmic domain walls (DWs) caused by quantum fluctuations of a light scalar field $\phi$ during inflation. Perturbations of $\phi$ remain almost constant after leaving…
We investigate the kination-amplified inflationary gravitational-wave background (GWB) interpretation of the signal recently reported by various pulsar timing array (PTA) experiments. Kination is a post-inflationary phase in the expansion…
The coupling between a pseudo-scalar inflaton and a gauge field leads to an amount of additional density perturbations and gravitational waves (GWs) that is strongly sensitive to the inflaton speed. This naturally results in enhanced GWs at…