Related papers: Elastic Inflation
In standard inflationary cosmology, scalar and tensor perturbations grew as the Universe expanded and froze when their wavelengths exceeded the Hubble horizon, producing a tell-tale signature in the fluctuation spectrum and amplitude of the…
A model of nonlinear electrodynamics with a dimensional parameter $\beta$ is considered. Electromagnetic fields are the source of the gravitation field and inflation of the universe. We imply that the universe is filled by stochastic…
Loop quantum cosmology provides an efficient framework to study the evolution of the Universe beyond the classical Big Bang paradigm. Because of holonomy corrections, the singularity is replaced by a "bounce". The dynamics of the background…
Inflation is a bold and expansive extension of the Standard Cosmology. It holds the promise to extend our understanding of the Universe to within 10^{-32}sec of the big bang and answer most of the pressing questions in cosmology. Its…
I present a brief review of astro-ph/0406099, which argues that there is a limit on the number of efolds of inflation which are observable in a universe which undergoes an eternally accelerated expansion in the future. Such an acceleration…
Current bounds on the tensor-to-scalar ratio imply that the energy scale of inflation may lie below the grand-unified scale. In this paper, we show that in a broad class of single-field inflation models with sufficiently small energy…
We consider the spectrum of primordial fluctuations produced by inflationary models where the inflaton potential is the sum of two exponential terms. A wide range of spectra result, with the only constraint being that the scalar spectrum…
A scale-invariant universe can have a period of accelerated expansion at early times: inflation. We use a frame-invariant approach to calculate inflationary observables in a scale invariant theory of gravity involving two scalar fields -…
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…
The basic workings of inflationary models are summarized, along with the arguments that strongly suggest that our universe is the product of inflation. It is argued that essentially all inflationary models lead to (future-)eternal…
We point out that detectable inflationary tensor modes can be generated by particle or string sources produced during inflation, consistently with the requirements for inflation and constraints from scalar fluctuations. We show via examples…
We study an inflationary scenario with a vector impurity. We show that the universe undergoes anisotropic inflationary expansion due to a preferred direction determined by the vector. Using the slow-roll approximation, we find a formula to…
A field kinetic coupling with the Einstein tensor leads to a gravitationally enhanced friction during inflation, by which even steep potentials with theoretically natural model parameters can drive cosmic acceleration. In the presence of…
We study the entanglement entropy resulting from tracing out local degrees of freedom of a quantum scalar field in an expanding universe. It is known that when field modes become superhorizon during inflation they evolve to increasingly…
Following inflation, the Universe may pass through an early matter-dominated phase supported by the oscillating inflaton condensate. Initially small fluctuations in the condensate grow gravitationally on subhorizon scales and can collapse…
Recently it was argued that an inflationary potential yielding power spectra characterized by a scale-invariant tensorial spectral index and a weakly scale-dependent scalar spectral index might account for a generic large-scale structure…
Inflation is an early period of accelerated cosmic expansion, thought to be sourced by high energy physics. A key task today is to use the influx of increasingly precise observational data to constrain the plethora of inflationary models…
Within the framework of a five-dimensional brane world with a stabilized radion, we compute the cosmological perturbations generated during inflation and show that the perturbations are a powerful tool to probe the physics of extra…
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…
In the framework of Born-Infeld inspired gravity theories, which deviates from General Relativity (GR) in the high curvature regime, we discuss the viability of Cosmic Inflation without scalar fields. For energy densities higher than the…