Related papers: A universal bound on the duration of a kination er…
Kination denotes an era in the cosmological history corresponding to an equation of state $\omega=+1$ such that the total energy density of the universe redshifts as the sixth inverse power of the scale factor. This arises if the universe…
Our ignorance of the period between the end of inflation and the beginning of Big Bang Nucleosynthesis limits our understanding of the origins and evolution of dark matter. One possibility is that the Universe's energy density was dominated…
In the standard big bang model the universe starts in a radiation dominated era, where the gravitational perturbations are described by second order differential equations, which will generally have two orthogonal set of solutions. One is…
Rotations of an axion field in field space provide a natural origin for an era of kination domination, where the energy density is dominated by the kinetic term of the axion field, preceded by an early era of matter domination. Remarkably,…
If the spatial curvature of the universe is positive, then the curvature term will always dominate at early enough times in a slow-rolling inflationary epoch. This enhances inflationary effects and hence puts limits on the possible number…
We compute the quantum circuit complexity of the evolution of scalar curvature perturbations on expanding backgrounds, using the language of squeezed vacuum states. In particular, we construct a simple cosmological model consisting of an…
We investigate the effects of large scalar inhomogeneities during the kination epoch, a period in which the universe's dynamics are dominated by the kinetic energy of a scalar field, by fully evolving the Einstein equations using numerical…
A very simple non-singular inflationary model is presented where the unique matter content is a radiation fluid. The model slowly contracts from a very large, almost empty and flat spacetime and realizes a bounce. It is then launched to a…
We analyze the passage to a continuum limit of the mode spectrum of primordial perturbations around flat cosmological spacetimes in Quantum Cosmology, showing that this limit can be reached even if one starts by considering a finite…
We present a simple procedure to obtain universal bounds for quantities of cosmological interest, such as the number of $e$-folds during inflation, reheating, and radiation, as well as the reheating temperature. The main assumption is to…
We study the primordial perturbations generated during a stage of single-field inflation in Einstein-aether theories. Quantum fluctuations of the inflaton and aether fields seed long wavelength adiabatic and isocurvature scalar…
We propose a unified framework that describes both the curvaton mechanism for generating primordial density fluctuations and the Affleck-Dine (AD) mechanism for baryogenesis. By introducing a complex scalar field (AD field) carrying a…
In Pre-Big-Bang and in Ekpyrotic Cosmology, perturbations on cosmological scales today are generated from quantum vacuum fluctuations during a phase when the Universe is contracting (viewed in the Einstein frame). The backgrounds studied to…
One signature of an expanding universe is the time-variation of the cosmological abundances of its different components. For example, a radiation-dominated universe inevitably gives way to a matter-dominated universe, and critical moments…
If the present acceleration of the universe is due to an asymptotically de Sitter universe with small cosmological constant, and the principle of Cosmological Complementarity is valid, then the number of e-foldings during inflation is…
We develop a cosmological model where primordial inflation is driven by a 'solid', defined as a system of three derivatively coupled scalar fields obeying certain symmetries and spontaneously breaking a certain subgroup of these. The…
We consider reheating in a class of asymptotically safe quantum field theories recently studied in \cite{Litim:2014uca, Litim:2015iea}. These theories allow for an inflationary phase in the very early universe. Inflation ends with a period…
We consider a cosmological model starting from (1) the(1+3+6)-dimensional space-times consisting of the outer space (the 3-dimensional expanding section) and the inner space (the 6-dimensional section) and reaching (2) the Friedmann model…
We study the evolution of the curvature perturbation on the super-horizon scales starting from the inflationary epoch until there remains only a single dynamical degree of freedom, presureless matter, in the universe. We consider the cosmic…
We consider cosmology with an inflaton scalar field with an additional quartic kinetic term. Such a theory can be motivated by Palatini $R+R^2$ modified gravity. Assuming a runaway inflaton potential, we take the Universe to become…