Related papers: Possible Explanation to Low CMB Quadrupole
Cosmologists have embraced a particular ad hoc formula for the primordial power spectrum from inflation for universes with $\Omega_0 < 1$. However, the so-called ``Open Inflation'' models, which are attracting renewed interest in 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…
I discuss how parameters describing inflation in the very early universe may be related to primordial perturbation spectra. Precision observations of anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) such as those provided by the WMAP…
Current observational data is consistent with the universe being slightly closed. We investigate families of singular and non-singular closed instantons that could describe the beginning of a closed inflationary universe. We calculate the…
At very early times, the universe was not in a vacuum state. Under the assumtion that the deviation from equillibrium was large, in particular that it is higher than the scale of inflation, we analyse the conditions for local transitions…
If the spatial sections of the Universe are positively curved, extrapolating the inflationary stage backward in time inevitably leads to a classical bounce. This simple scenario, non-singular and free of exotic physics, deserves to be…
The BB-mode angular correlation power spectrum of CMB is obtained by considering the primordial gravitational waves in the squeezed vacuum state for various inflationary models and results are compared with the joint analysis of the…
Inflation as the leading paradigm depicting the very early universe physics could leave imprints on the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation. Using currently available CMB observations, we give the tightest constraints on inflation…
We quantify the slow-roll corrections to primordial density perturbations arising from inflation driven by a four-dimensional scalar field with a monomial potential in a five-dimensional non-compact bulk spacetime. Although the difference…
Inflection point inflation generically includes a deviation from slow-roll when the inflaton approaches the inflection point. Such deviations are shown to be generated by transitions between singular trajectories. The effects on the power…
We generalize the treatment of inflationary perturbations to deal with the non-Markovian colored noise emerging from any realistic approach to stochastic inflation. We provide a calculation of the power-spectrum of the gauge-invariant…
Cosmological inflation remains to be a unique mechanism of generation of plausible initial conditions in the early universe. In particular, it generates the primordial quasiclassical perturbations with power spectrum determined by the…
Our universe may have formed via bubble nucleation in an eternally-inflating background. Furthermore, the background may have a compact dimension--the modulus of which tunnels out of a metastable minimum during bubble nucleation--which…
The temperature anisotropies and polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation provide a window back to the physics of the early universe. They encode the nature of the initial fluctuations and so can reveal much about the…
It is well-known that first order phase transitions in the early universe can be a powerful source of observable stochastic gravitational wave backgrounds. Any such gravitational wave background must exhibit large-scale anisotropies at…
We construct a string-inspired nonsingular cosmological scenario in which an inflaton field is driven up the potential before the graceful exit by employing a low-energy string effective action with an orbifold compactification. This sets…
Quantum fast-roll initial conditions for the inflaton which are different from the classical fast-roll conditions and from the quantum slow-roll conditions can lead to inflation that last long enough. These quantum fast-roll initial…
We show that models of `just enough' inflation, where the slow-roll evolution lasted only $50-60$ e-foldings, feature modifications of the CMB power spectrum at large angular scales. We perform a systematic and model-independent analysis of…
In this paper we consider the question of observational signatures of a false vacuum decay event in the early universe followed by a period of inflation; in particular, motivated by the string landscape, we consider decays in which the…
Cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropy may result from both scalar and tensor perturbations. For a sufficiently narrow range of angular scales, CMB perturbations can be characterized by four parameters. Results from the Cosmic…