Related papers: Inflation and Precision Cosmology
I examine the status of inflationary cosmology in light of the first-year data from the WMAP satellite, focusing on the simplest models of inflation: those driven by a single scalar field. The WMAP observation of the Cosmic Microwave…
This article provides an introductory review of inflation and cosmological perturbation theory. I begin by motivating the need for an epoch of inflation during the early stages of the radiation dominated era, and describe how inflation is…
The very basics of cosmological inflation are discussed. We derive the equations of motion for the inflaton field, introduce the slow-roll parameters, and present the computation of the inflationary perturbations and their connection to the…
Slow-roll inflation generically makes several predictions: a flat Universe, primordial adiabatic density perturbations, and a stochastic gravity-wave background. Each inflation model will further predict specific relations between the…
This article gives a brief overview of some of the theory behind the inflationary cosmology, and discusses prospects for constraining inflation using observations. Particular care is given to the question of falsifiability of inflation or…
The previously proposed class of phenomenological inflationary models in which the assumption of inflaton slow-roll is replaced by the more general, constant-roll condition is compared with the most recent cosmological observational data,…
We consider the torsional completion of gravity with spinor and scalar fields: we show how in this environment conditions of extreme symmetry or specific approximations imply the scalar field to be constant, so that slow-roll takes place…
Inflation predicts the generation of cosmological perturbations. Usually, the power spectra for the scalar and tensor modes are calculated with help of the slow roll approximation. In the case of power law inflation an exact result is…
I discuss the current status of inflationary cosmology in light of the recent WMAP 3-year data release. The basic predictions of inflation are all supported by the data. Inflation also makes predictions which have not been well tested by…
This article contains a concise review of the theory of inflation. We discuss its main theoretical aspects as well as its observational predictions. We also explain how the most recent astrophysical observations constrain the inflationary…
After a brief summary of general relativity and cosmology, we present the basic concepts underlying inflation, the currently best motivated models for the early Universe. We describe the simplest inflation models, based on a single scalar…
This article gives a brief overview of the status of attempts to constrain inflation using observations, and examines prospects for future developments.
Inflationary cosmology has made significant strides in understanding the physics driving the rapid expansion of the early universe. However, many inflation models with diverse potential shapes present analysis, comparison, and…
We review the constraints that the recently released Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) Planck data put on inflation and we argue that single field slow-roll inflationary scenarios (with minimal kinetic term) are favored. Then, within this…
An epoch of accelerated expansion, or inflation, in the early universe solves several cosmological problems. While there are many models of inflation only recently has it become possible to discriminate between some of the models using…
Nonminimal coupling of the inflaton field to the Ricci curvature of spacetime is generally unavoidable, and the paradigm of inflation should be generalized by including the corresponding term in the Lagrangian of the inflationary theory.…
This paper is intended to offer a pedagogical treatment of cosmological modeling and inflationary cosmology. In recent years, inflation has become accepted as a standard scenario making predictions that are testable by observations of the…
Seemingly unrelated models of inflation that originate from different physical setups yield, in some cases, identical predictions for the currently constrained inflationary observables. In order to classify the available models, we propose…
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…
In this work, I consider an inflation model with a quadratic potential and a negative cosmological constant. An analytical solution of the equation of motion for the inflaton field is found without slow-roll approximation. The result is…