Related papers: Effective Field Equations of the Quantum Gravitati…
We consider a universe in which inflation commences because of a positive cosmological constant, the effect of which is progressively screened by the interaction between virtual gravitons that become trapped in the expansion of spacetime.…
We review some perturbative results obtained in quantum gravity in an accelerating cosmological background. We then describe a class of non-local, purely gravitational models which have the correct structure to reproduce the leading…
We study a class of non-local, purely gravitational models which have the correct structure to reproduce the leading infrared logarithms of quantum gravitational back-reaction during the inflationary regime. These models end inflation in a…
The quantum gravitational back-reaction on inflation is based on the self-gravitation of infrared gravitons which are ripped out of the vacuum during inflation. The only quantum part of this process is the creation of gravitons; after they…
Quantum gravitational back-reaction offers a simultaneous explanation for why the cosmological constant is so small and a natural model of inflation in which scalars play no role. In this talk I review previous work and present a simple…
The Higgs field is an attractive candidate for the inflaton because it is an observationally confirmed fundamental scalar field. Importantly, it can be modeled by the most general renormalizable scalar potential. However, if the classical…
It has recently been suggested that Planck scale physics may effect the evolution of cosmological fluctuations in the early stages of cosmological inflation in a non-trivial way, leading to an excited state for modes whose wavelength is…
This review article aims at presenting the theory of inflation. We first describe the background spacetime behavior during the slow-roll phase and analyze how inflation ends and the Universe reheats. Then, we present the theory of…
The effects of the gravitational back reaction of cosmological perturbations are investigated in a phantom inflation model. The effective energy-momentum tensor of the gravitational back reaction of cosmological perturbations whose…
Inflation and quintessence can both be described by a single scalar field. The cosmic time evolution of this cosmon field realizes a crossover from the region of an ultraviolet fixed point in the infinite past to an infrared fixed point in…
We describe our recent calculation of two-loop corrections to the expansion rate of an initially inflating universe on the manifold $T^3 \times \Re$. If correct, our result proves that quantum gravitational effects slow the rate of…
We evaluate the quantum backreaction due to a gauge field coupled to a pseudo-scalar field driving a slow-roll inflationary stage, the so-called axion inflation. The backreaction is evaluated for the first time using a gauge invariant…
Informed by a quantum information perspective, we interpret cosmological expansion of space as growing entanglement between underlying degrees of freedom. In particular, we focus on inflationary cosmology, which, while being a successful…
Because of the non-linearity of the Einstein equations, the cosmological fluctuations which are generated during inflation on a wide range of wavelengths do not evolve independently. In particular, to second order in perturbation theory,…
We consider a novel model of cosmic inflation. In our model one does not need any specific matter field to drive inflation, but inflation stems from the microscopic, Planck scale structure of spacetime, thus being of quantum gravitational…
We study a class of non-local, action-based, and purely gravitational models. These models seek to describe a cosmology in which inflation is driven by a large, bare cosmological constant that is screened by the self-gravitation between the…
We present a mechanism for the emergence of cosmic acceleration within the mean-field approximation of Group Field Theory models of quantum gravity. Depending on the interaction type, the resulting cosmological dynamics can either feature a…
It is shown that the inflationary era in early universe is realized due to the effect of backreaction of quantized matter fields. In fact we start by quantizing a free scalar field in the Friedmann-Robertson-Walker space-time, and the field…
We calculate the back-reaction of long wavelength cosmological perturbations on a general relativistic measure of the local expansion rate of the Universe. Specifically, we consider a cosmological model in which matter is described by two…
In order to solve the fine-tuning problem of the cosmological constant, we propose a simple model with the vacuum energy non-minimally coupled to the inflaton field. In this model, the vacuum energy decays to the inflaton during…