Related papers: An Exposition on Inflationary Cosmology
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…
Alan Guth introduced cosmologists to inflation at the 1980 Texas Symposium. Since, inflation has had almost as much impact on cosmology as the big-bang model itself. However, unlike the big-bang model, it has little observational support.…
The main objective of this study is to investigate the phenomenon of the bouncing scenario of the universe. The most widely recognized cosmological framework is the standard cosmological model, sometimes referred to as the Big Bang model.…
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…
This essay outlines the Holographic Space-time (HST) theory of cosmology and its relation to conventional theories of inflation. The predictions of the theory are compatible with observations, and one must hope for data on primordial…
We study the implications of the recently proposed Trans-Planckian Censorship Conjecture (TCC) for early universe cosmology and in particular inflationary cosmology. The TCC leads to the conclusion that if we want inflationary cosmology to…
Models of cosmic inflation posit an early phase of accelerated expansion of the universe, driven by the dynamics of one or more scalar fields in curved spacetime. Though detailed assumptions about fields and couplings vary across models,…
Various issues concerning the impact of inflationary models on parameter estimation from the cosmic microwave background are reviewed, with particular focus on the range of possible outcomes of inflationary models and on the amount which…
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…
Astrophysical observations provide the best evidence of physics beyond the particle physicists' standard model. Over the past decade, the case has solidified for inflation, dark energy, dark matter and massive neutrinos. In this report we…
This is a pedagogical introduction to early cosmology and the host of fundamental physics involved in it (particle physics, grand unification and general relativity). Inflation and the inflaton field are the central theme of this review.…
The Universe is currently in a phase of accelerated expansion, a fact that was experimentally proven in the late 1990s. Cosmological models involving scalar fields allow the description of this accelerated expansion regime in the Cosmos and…
Observational Cosmology has indeed made very rapid progress in the past decade. The ability to quantify the universe has largely improved due to observational constraints coming from structure formation Measurements of CMB anisotropy and,…
The next decade will feature an abundance of novel cosmological data, while many fundamental questions about inflation remain. Given this, there is ample need for maximally efficient calculations, especially in non-standard scenarios for…
Cosmology and particle physics have long been dominated by theoretical paradigms: Einstein's general theory of relativity in cosmology and the Standard Model of particle physics. The time may have come for paradigm shifts. Does cosmological…
A brief introduction to the gauge invariant classical and quantum theory of cosmological perturbations is given. The formalism is applied to inflationary Universe models and yields a consistent and unified description of the generation and…
Models of inflationary cosmology can lead to variation of observable parameters ("constants of Nature") on extremely large scales. The question of making probabilistic predictions for today's observables in such models has been investigated…
In this thesis we will primarily demonstrate how additional scalar degrees of freedom - which are motivated from many high-energy embeddings - open up new observational windows onto the physics of inflation. We construct a Bayesian…
Facing the advent of the next generation cosmological surveys we present a method to forecast knowledge gain on cosmological models. We propose this as a well defined and general tool to quantify the performance of different experiments in…
In this paper we present the problem of quantum to classical transition of quantum fluctuations during inflation and in particular the question of evolution of entanglement. After a general introduction, three specific very recent works are…