Related papers: Stochastic Inflation and the Lower Multipoles in t…
We emphasize that the estimation of cosmological parameters from cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropy data, such as the recent high resolution maps from BOOMERanG and MAXIMA-1, requires assumptions about the primordial spectra. The…
It is well known that processes of first order phase transitions may have occurred in the inflationary era. If one or more occurred well before the end of inflation, the nucleated bubbles are stretched to large scales and the primordial…
Recent tentative findings of non-Gaussian structure in the COBE-DMR dataset have triggered renewed attention to candidate models from which such intrinsic signature could arise. In the framework of slow roll inflation with built-in non…
We investigate inflationary scenarios driven by a class of potentials which are similar in form to those that arise in certain minimal supersymmetric extensions of the standard model. We find that these potentials allow a brief period of…
The apparent alignment of the cosmic microwave background multipoles on large scales challenges the standard cosmological model. Scalar field inflation is isotropic and cannot account for the observed alignment. We explore the imprints, a…
The observed power spectrum of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) is consistent with inflationary cosmology, which predicts a nearly scale-invariant power spectrum of quantum fluctuations of the inflaton field as they exit the Hubble…
The Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) anisotropy power on the largest angular scales observed both by WMAP and COBE DMR appears to be lower than the one predicted by the standard model of cosmology with almost scale free primordial…
Recent released WMAP data show a low value of quadrupole in the CMB temperature fluctuations, which confirms the early observations by COBE. In this paper, a scenario, in which a contracting phase is followed by an inflationary phase, is…
Non-Gaussianity in the inflationary perturbations can couple observable scales to modes of much longer wavelength (even superhorizon), leaving as a signature a large-angle modulation of the observed cosmic microwave background (CMB) power…
The recent observation of the cosmic microwave background anisotropy by the WMAP confirmed that the lower multipoles are considerably suppressed. From the standpoint of the cosmic variance, it is nothing but a statistical accident.…
We study both the background evolution and cosmological perturbations of anisotropic inflationary models supported by coupled scalar and vector fields. The models we study preserve the U(1) gauge symmetry associated with the vector field,…
We discuss ability of the harmonic pattern of peaks in the CMB angular power spectrum to test inflation. By studying robust features of alternate models, which must all be isocurvature in nature, we reveal signatures unique to inflation.…
We study the asymmetric primordial fluctuations in a model of inflation in which translational invariance is broken by a domain wall. We calculate the corrections to the power spectrum of curvature perturbations; they are anisotropic and…
Recent measurements by the {\it Planck} experiment of the power spectrum of temperature anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB) reveal a deficit of power in low multipoles compared to the predictions from best-fit…
We propose a new source for the cosmological density perturbation which is passive fluctuations of the inflaton driven dynamically by a colored quantum noise as a result of its coupling to other massive quantum fields. The created…
Measurements of CMB temperature fluctuations by the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) indicate that the fluctuation amplitude in one half of the sky differs from the amplitude in the other half. We show that such an asymmetry…
In single-field, slow-roll inflationary models, scalar and tensorial (Gaussian) perturbations are both characterized by a zero mean and a non-zero variance. In position space, the corresponding variance of those fields diverges in the…
We consider the imprints of local massive defects, such as a black hole or a massive monopole, during inflation. The massive defect breaks the background homogeneity. We consider the limit that the physical Schwarzschild radius of the…
We consider an alternative scenario of inflation which can account for a spatially open universe. It is similar to the old inflation in which the bubble nucleation occurs in the sea of false vacuum, but differs from it in that the second…
Within the context of supersymmetric hybrid inflation, we study a multiple-stage inflationary scenario that can generate a primordial spectrum of adiabatic density perturbations with a break at $k_b \simeq 0.05 h Mpc^{-1}$. The presence of…