Related papers: Dual Inflation and Bounce Cosmologies Interpretati…
We calculate the gravitational waves (GW) spectrum produced in various Early Universe scenarios from gauge field sources, thus generalizing earlier inflationary calculations to bouncing cosmologies. We consider generic couplings between the…
I review two cosmological paradigms which are alternative to the current inflationary scenario. The first alternative is the "matter bounce", a non-singular bouncing cosmology with a matter-dominated phase of contraction. The second is an…
We discuss the inflationary paradigm, how it can be tested, and how various models of inflation fare in the light of data from Planck and BICEP2. We introduce inflation and reheating, and discuss temperature and polarisation anisotropies in…
Inflationary cosmology explains the homogeneity and large-scale structure of the universe through a brief epoch of accelerated expansion following the Big Bang. Cyclic cosmologies, in contrast, describe a universe undergoing successive…
It is conjectured that inflation, taking account of quantum gravity, leads to a discrete spectrum of cosmological perturbations, instead of the continuous Gaussian spectrum predicted by standard field theory in an unquantized background.…
We use cosmic microwave background (CMB) data from the 9-year WMAP release to derive constraints on monodromy inflation, which is characterized by a linear inflaton potential with a periodic modulation. We identify two possible periodic…
We show that a scalar excited state with large occupation numbers during inflation leads to an enhancement of tensor modes and a characteristic pattern of order-one oscillations in the associated stochastic gravitational wave background…
A first-order phase transition in the early universe can give an observable stochastic gravitational background (SGWB), which will necessarily have primordial anisotropies across the sky. In multi-field inflationary scenarios, these…
We demonstrate that the intermediate inflation scenario, is a singular inflation cosmology, with the singularity at the origin $t=0$ being a pressure and energy density singularity and particularly a Type III singularity. Also, we show that…
The non-Gaussianity of inflationary perturbations, as encoded in the bispectrum (or 3-point correlator), has become an important additional way of distinguishing between inflation models, going beyond the linear Gaussian perturbation…
Bouncing cosmologies, while offering a compelling alternative to inflationary models, face challenges from the growth of vector perturbations during the contracting phase. While linear vector instabilities can be avoided with specific…
In standard inflationary cosmology, scalar and tensor perturbations grew as the Universe expanded and froze when their wavelengths exceeded the Hubble horizon, producing a tell-tale signature in the fluctuation spectrum and amplitude of the…
We introduce an extension of the standard inflationary paradigm on which the big bang singularity is replaced by an anisotropic bounce. Unlike in the big bang model, cosmological perturbations find an adiabatic regime in the past. We show…
This thesis is dedicated to the study of inflationary scenarios based on string theory. Inflation is a brief period of accelerated expansion in the very early Universe which gives natural explanations for problems of the Standard Big Bang…
The results from Planck2015, when combined with earlier observations from WMAP, ACT, SPT and other experiments, were the first observations to disfavor the "classic" inflationary paradigm. To satisfy the observational constraints,…
A short introduction to structure formation is given, followed by a discussion of the possible characteristics of the initial perturbations assuming a generic inflationary origin. Observational data related to large-scale structure and the…
We review matter bounce scenarios where the matter content is dark matter and dark energy. These cosmologies predict a nearly scale-invariant power spectrum with a slightly red tilt for scalar perturbations and a small tensor-to-scalar…
We study and estimate probabilistic predictions for the duration of the preinflationary and slow-roll phases after the bounce in loop quantum cosmology, determining how the presence of radiation in the prebounce phase affects these results.…
We examine stochastic temperature fluctuations of the cosmic background radiation (CBR) arising via the Sachs-Wolfe effect from gravitational wave perturbations produced in the early universe. These temperature fluctuations are described by…
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…