Related papers: Is the observable Universe generic?
We explore the types of slow-roll inflationary potentials that result in scalar perturbations with a constant spectral index, i.e., perturbations that may be described by a single power-law spectrum over all observable scales. We devote…
Observable quantities in cosmology are dimensionless, and therefore independent of the units in which they are measured. This is true of all physical quantities associated with the primordial perturbations that source cosmic microwave…
We build a number of integrable one--scalar spatially flat cosmologies, which play a natural role in inflationary scenarios, examine their behavior in several cases and draw from them some general lessons on this type of systems, whose…
We investigate the possible effect of cosmological-constant type dark energy during the inflation period of the early universe. This is accommodated by a new dispersion relation in de Sitter space. The modified inflation model of a…
This article discusses density perturbations in inflationary models, offering a pedagogical description of how these perturbations are generated by quantum fluctuations in the early universe. A key feature of inflation is that that rapid…
The "new standard cosmology", based on the theory of inflation, has very impressive observational support. I review some outstanding problems of the new cosmology and the global view of the universe -- the multiverse -- that it suggests. I…
Due to the accelerated expansion of the universe, the possibility of formation of singularities has changed from the classical Big Bang and Big Crunch singularities to include a number of new scenarios. In recent papers it has been shown…
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.…
Moduli with flat or run-away classical potentials are generic in theories based on supersymmetry and extra dimensions. They mix between themselves and with matter fields in kinetic terms and in the nonperturbative superpotentials. As the…
The particle production process is reviewed, through which cosmic inflation can produce a scale invariant superhorizon spectrum of perturbations of suitable fields starting from their quantum fluctuations. Afterwards, in the context of the…
We revisit inflation with non-canonical scalar fields by applying deformed-steepness exponential potentials. We show that the resulting scenario can lead to inflationary observables, and in particular to scalar spectral index and…
Weyl (scale) invariant theories of scalars and gravity can generate all mass scales spontaneously. In this paper we study a particularly simple version -- scale invariant $R^2$ gravity -- and show that, during an inflationary period, it…
We propose a novel scenario in which scalar perturbations, that seed the large scale structure of the Universe, are generated without relying on a scalar field (the inflaton). In this framework, inflation is driven by a de Sitter space-time…
Recent detection of $B$-mode polarization induced from tensor perturbations by the BICEP2 experiment implies so-called large field inflation, where an inflaton field takes super-Planckian expectation value during inflation, at a high energy…
We study chaotic inflation with a quadratic potential in all dimensions. The spectral indices of scalar and tensor perturbations and also their running have been calculated in all dimensions.
Based on the conventional metric tensor and driven by a nearly constant energy density, cosmic inflation, characterized by a remarkably accelerated expansion, was proposed as an early epoch in the Universe. The energy density is typically…
We consider the possibility that the universe, viewed as a three-brane, originated in a region of strong external field strength due to a four-form gauge field in the bulk. It is shown that in a scenario of this kind inflation is generic…
In conventional model independent approaches, the power spectrum of primordial perturbations is characterized by such free parameters as spectral index, its running, the running of running, and the tensor-to-scalar ratio. In this work we,…
Purely geometrical arguments show that there exist classes of homospectral inflationary cosmologies, i.e. different expansion histories producing the same spectrum of comoving curvature perturbations. We develop a general algorithm to…
We investigate the inflationary universe in a theory where two scalar fields non-minimally coupling to the scalar curvature and an extra $R^2$ term exist and the conformal invariance is broken. In particular, the slow-roll inflation is…