Related papers: Initial conditions for quintessence after inflatio…
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 study thermally induced density perturbations during inflation. This scenario is characterized by two thermodynamical conditions: (1) The primordial perturbations originate in the epoch when the inflationary universe contains a…
We construct a model of quintessential inflation in Palatini $R^2$ gravity employing a scalar field with a simple exponential potential and coupled to gravity with a running non-minimal coupling. At early times, the field acts as the…
We investigate inflation driven by the evolution of highly excited quantum states within the framework of out of equilibrium field dynamics. The self-consistent evolution of these quantum states and the scale factor is studied analytically…
In models of coupled dark energy, in which a dark energy scalar field couples to other matter components, it is natural to expect a coupling to the inflaton as well. We explore the consequences of such a coupling in the context of single…
The incorporation of bulk viscosity process to General Relativity leads to the appearance of nonsingular backgrounds that, at early and late times, depict an accelerated universe. These backgrounds could be analytically calculated and…
We compute the power spectrum of curvature perturbations in stochastic inflation. This combines the distribution of first crossing times through the end-of-inflation surface, which has been previously studied, with the distribution of the…
Fluctuations play a critical role in cosmology. They are relevant across a range of phenomena from the dynamics of inflation to the formation of structure. In many cases, these fluctuations are coarse grained and follow a Gaussian…
Quantization implies independent degrees of freedom that do not appear in the classical theory, given by fluctuations, correlations, and higher moments of a state. A systematic derivation of the resulting dynamical systems is presented here…
The (large-scale) structures we observe in the Universe are classical, but within the inflationary scenario they do originate from quantum fluctuations. This leads to the question: ''How did this quantum-to-classical transition occur?''. A…
We discuss the inflationary paradigm, how it can be tested, and how various models of inflation fare in the light of data from Planck and BICEP2. We introduce inflation and reheating, and discuss temperature and polarisation anisotropies in…
A scenario with two subsequent periods of inflationary expansion in the very early universe is examined. The model is based on a potential motivated by symmetries being found in field theory at high energy. For various parameter sets of the…
Investigating the thermal inflationary model, we introduce stochastic effects, incorporating a cutoff parameter $\sigma$ which distinguishes between quantum and classical modes. Testing the model against Planck 2018 data, we observe a…
In this work we generalize a previously developed semiclassical approach to inflation, devoted to the analysis of the effective dynamics of coarse-grained fields, which are essential to the stochastic approach to inflation. We consider…
The possibility of the resilience of the beginning of inflation under unfavorable conditions is examined by considering the initial state of the inflaton field to be in the form of a relativistic gas with some of its properties in close…
During inflation, vacuum quantum fluctuations are amplified and stretched to astrophysical distances. They give rise to fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature and polarisation, and to large-scale structures in our…
An appealing feature of inflationary cosmology is the presence of a phase-space attractor, "slow roll", which washes out the dependence on initial field velocities. We investigate the robustness of this property under backreaction from…
If the spatial curvature of the universe is positive, then the curvature term will always dominate at early enough times in a slow-rolling inflationary epoch. This enhances inflationary effects and hence puts limits on the possible number…
We investigate whether inflation requires finely tuned initial conditions in order to explain the degree of flatness and homogeneity observed in the Universe. We achieve this by using the Eisenhart lift, which can be used to write any…
These lectures are intended to give a pedagogical introduction to the main current picture of the very early universe. After elementary reviews of general relativity and of the standard Big Bang model, the following subjects are discussed:…