Related papers: Principles, Progress and Problems in Inflationary …
I review the current status of the theory of Cosmic Inflation. My discussion covers the motivation and implementation of the idea, as well as an analysis of recent successes and open questions. There is a special discussion of the physics…
A short introduction to structure formation is given, followed by a discussion of the possible characteristics of the initial perturbations assuming a generic inflationary origin. Observational data related to large-scale structure and the…
Despite its central role in modern cosmology, doubts are often expressed as to whether cosmological inflation is really a falsifiable theory. We distinguish two facets of inflation, one as a theory of initial conditions for the hot big bang…
The accelerated expansion of space during the period of cosmological inflation leads to trans-Planckian issues which need to be addressed. Most importantly, the physical wavelength of fluctuations which are studied at the present time by…
Inflation is considered one of the cornerstones of modern cosmology. However, the account of the origin of cosmic structure, as provided by the standard inflationary paradigm, is not fully satisfactory. The fundamental issue is the…
The theory of the inflationary multiverse changes the way we think about our place in the world. According to its most popular version, our world may consist of infinitely many exponentially large parts, exhibiting different sets of…
In order to draw out the essential behavior of the universe, investigations of early universe cosmology often reduce the complex system to a simple integrable system. Inflationary models are of this kind as they focus on simple scalar field…
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…
This is a pedagogical introduction to early cosmology and the host of fundamental physics involved in it (particle physics, grand unification and general relativity). Inflation and the inflaton field are the central theme of this review.…
We discuss the possibility that the inflationary paradigm, undoubtfully today's best framework to understand all the present cosmological data, may still have some viable challengers. The underlying idea for such discussions is that…
Using techniques from loop quantum gravity, the standard theory of cosmological perturbations was recently generalized to encompass the Planck era. We now apply this framework to explore pre-inflationary dynamics. The framework enables us…
In a previous paper we proposed a new approach to the beginning of inflation -- a lingering universe. The universe begins in a lingering state with a nearly vanishing Hubble parameter. This calls into question the absolute age of the…
The difficult issues related to the interpretation of quantum mechanics and, in particular, the "measurement problem" are revisited using as motivation the process of generation of structure from quantum fluctuations in inflationary…
The Pre-Big Bang cosmology inspired generations of cosmologists in attempts to cure the initial Big Bang singularity using a fundamental length scale as proposed by String Theory. The existence of a phase of collapse/inflation with…
The formation of structure in the Universe offers some of the most powerful evidence in favour of the existence of dark matter in the Universe. We summarize recent work by ourselves and our collaborators, using linear and quasi-linear…
Cosmic inflation is envisioned as the ``most likely'' start for the observed universe. To give substance to this claim, a framework is needed in which inflation can compete with other scenarios and the relative likelihood of all scenarios…
In this thesis we will primarily demonstrate how additional scalar degrees of freedom - which are motivated from many high-energy embeddings - open up new observational windows onto the physics of inflation. We construct a Bayesian…
The basic workings of inflationary models are summarized, along with the arguments that strongly suggest that our universe is the product of inflation. I describe the quantum origin of density perturbations, giving a heuristic derivation of…
We are on the verge of the first precision testing of the inflationary cosmology as a model for the origin of structure in the Universe. I review the key predictions of inflation which can be used as observational tests, in the sense of…
We show that inflationary cosmology may be used to test the statistical predictions of quantum theory at very short distances and at very early times. Hidden-variables theories, such as the pilot-wave theory of de Broglie and Bohm, allow…