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The first turbulent combustion arises in a hot big bang cosmological model Gibson (2004) where nonlinear exothermic turbulence permitted by quantum mechanics, general relativity, multidimensional superstring theory, and fluid mechanics…
A possibility that the universe may be strongly inhomogeneous chemically, while very smooth energetically, is considered. A possible mechanism which could lead to such a picture is a large and inhomogeneous lepton asymmetry. The model may…
Very different processes characterize the decoupling of neutrinos to form the cosmic neutrino background (C$\nu$B) and the much later decoupling of photons from thermal equilibrium to form the cosmic microwave background (CMB). The C$\nu$B…
The synthesis of helium in the early Universe depends on many input parameters, including the value of the gravitational coupling during the period when the nucleosynthesis takes place. We compute the primordial abundance of helium as…
Cosmology and particle physics are deeply interrelated. Among the common problems are dark energy, dark matter and baryon asymmetry of the Universe. We discuss these problems in general terms, and concentrate on several particular…
In the first one of these two lectures, I give an introductory review of phase transitions in finite temperature field theories. I highlight the differences between theories with global and local symmetries, and the similarities between…
In the present model, a unified picture of cosmology from early inflation to late acceleration is obtained from $ f(R)-$ gravity with non-linear terms $ R^2 $ and $ R^5 $ of scalar curvature $R$. It is discussed that elementary particles…
The first massive stars triggered the onset of chemical evolution by releasing the first metals (elements heavier than helium) in the Universe. The nature of these stars and how the early chemical enrichment took place is still largely…
The emission from dark ages halos in the lines of transitions between lowest rotational levels of hydrogen and hydrogen deuteride molecules is analyzed. It is assumed molecules to be excited by CMB and collisions with hydrogen atoms. The…
This is the first paper of a series devoted to the study of the cosmological implications of the parallel mirror world with the same microphysics as the ordinary one, but having smaller temperature, with a limit set by the BBN constraints.…
The physical ingredients to describe the epoch of cosmological recombination are amazingly simple and well-understood. This fact allows us to take into account a very large variety of physical processes, still finding potentially measurable…
To constrain the universe before recombination (380000 years after the Big Bang), we mostly rely on the measurements of the primordial abundances that indicate the first insight into the thermal history of the universe. The first production…
The transformation of cold neutral intergalactic hydrogen into a highly ionized warm plasma marks the end of the cosmic dark ages and the beginning of the age of galaxies. The details of this process reflect the nature of the early sources…
Many questions in physical cosmology regarding the thermal history of the intergalactic medium, chemical enrichment, reionization, etc. are thought to be intimately related to the nature and evolution of pregalactic structure. In particular…
A QCD phase transition in the early universe could have left inhomogeneities in the baryon to photon ratio and in isospin that might have affected nucleosynthesis later on. At very high temperature QCD plasma can be described by…
We analyze a new mechanism for the cosmological QCD first-order phase transition: inhomogeneous nucleation. The primordial temperature fluctuations are larger than the tiny temperature interval, in which bubbles would form in the standard…
The main goal of this work is to calculate the contributions to the cosmological recombination spectrum due to bound-bound transitions of helium. We show that due to the presence of helium in the early Universe unique features appear in the…
The cosmological QCD transition affects primordial density perturbations. If the QCD transition is first order, the sound speed vanishes during the transition and density perturbations fall freely. For scales below the Hubble radius at the…
The primordial bispectrum has been considered in the past decade as a powerful probe of the physical processes taking place in the early Universe. Within the inflationary paradigm, the properties of the bispectrum are one of the keys that…
The evolution of the Universe is the ultimate laboratory to study fundamental physics across energy scales that span about 25 orders of magnitude: from the grand unification scale through particle and nuclear physics scales down to the…