Related papers: Constraints on Inflation
This article gives a brief overview of some of the theory behind the inflationary cosmology, and discusses prospects for constraining inflation using observations. Particular care is given to the question of falsifiability of inflation or…
Gravitational waves are propagating undulations in the spacetime fabric, which interact very weakly with their environment. In cosmology, gravitational-wave distortions are produced by most of the inflationary scenarios and their…
Cosmological inflation generates a spectrum of density perturbations that can seed the cosmic structures we observe today. These perturbations are usually computed as the result of the gravitationally-induced spontaneous creation of…
Formulae are derived for the spectra of scalar curvature perturbations and gravitational waves produced during inflation, special cases of which include power law inflation, natural inflation in the small angle approximation and inflation…
Physical scenarios, leading to highly energetic stochastic gravitational waves backgrounds (for frequencies ranging from the $\mu$Hz up to the GHz) are examined. In some cases the typical amplitude of the logarithmic energy spectrum can be…
These lectures present a brief review of inflationary cosmology, provide an overview of the theory of cosmological perturbations, and then focus on the conceptual problems of the current paradigm of early universe cosmology, thus motivating…
We review the current standard model for the evolution of the Universe from an early inflationary epoch to the complex hierarchy of structure seen today. We summarize and provide key references for the following topics: observations of the…
The theory of cosmological perturbations has become a cornerstone of modern quantitative cosmology since it is the framework which provides the link between the models of the very early Universe such as the inflationary Universe scenario…
The next generation of gravitational wave detectors holds out the prospect of detecting a stochastic gravitational background generated in the very early universe. In this article, we review the various cosmological processes which can lead…
Observational Cosmology has indeed made very rapid progress in recent years. The ability to quantify the universe has largely improved due to observational constraints coming from structure formation Measurements of CMB anisotropy and, more…
Understanding the behavior of the universe at large depends critically on insights about the smallest units of matter and their fundamental interactions. Inflationary cosmology is a highly successful framework for exploring these…
Cosmological perturbations, originating in the quantum fluctuations of the fields that drive inflation, are observed to be nearly scale invariant at the largest scales. At smaller scales, however, perturbations are not severely constrained…
In this lecture I give a pedagogical introduction to inflationary cosmology with a special focus on the quantum generation of cosmological perturbations.
Cosmic structures at large scales represent the earliest and most extended form of matter condensation. In this lecture we review the application of the methods and concepts of modern statistical physics to these structures. This leads to a…
With an energy scale that can be as high as $10^{14}\,{\rm GeV}$, inflation may provide a unique probe of high-energy physics. Both scalar and tensor fluctuations generated during this early accelerated expansion contain crucial information…
Inflation may have been driven by a component which violated the Null-Energy Condition, thereby leading to {\it super inflation}. We provide the formalism to study cosmological perturbations when such a component is described by a scalar…
Assuming that the early universe had (i) a description using perturbative string theory and its field theory limit (ii) an epoch of slow-roll inflation within a four-dimensional effective field theory and a hierarchy of scales $M_{inf} <…
There are at least three cosmic backgrounds of primordial gravitational waves coming from inflation: those produced during inflation and associated with the stretching of quantum modes; those produced at the violent stage of preheating…
Attempts at building an unified description of the strong, weak and electromagnetic interactions usually involve several stages of spontaneous symmetry breaking. We consider the effects of such symmetry breaking during an era of primordial…
Near comoving wavenumber k, the gravitational-wave background (GWB) from inflation carries information about the physical conditions near two moments in cosmic history: the moment when k ``left the horizon'' during inflation, and the moment…