Related papers: "Graceful" Old Inflation
It is already understood that the increasing observational evidence for an open Universe can be reconciled with inflation if our horizon is contained inside one single huge bubble nucleated during the inflationary phase transition. In this…
We argue that for $f(R)=R+\alpha R^n$ model of the early universe, the de Sitter point appears as partial attractor for phantom paths. The phantom trajectories then bend their way to the oscillatory period passing near the de Sitter saddle…
We propose a stringy version of the old inflation scenario which does not require any slow-roll inflaton potential and is based on a specific example of string compatification with warped metric. Our set-up admits the presence of…
We find a unique way of realizing inflation through cyclic phases in an universe with negative vacuum energy. According to the second law of thermodynamics entropy monotonically increases from cycle to cycle, typically by a constant factor.…
If the effective cosmological constant is non-zero, our observable universe may enter a stage of exponential expansion. In such case, regions of it may tunnel back to the false vacuum of an inflaton scalar field, and inflation with a high…
The physics of the inflationary universe requires the study of the out of equilibrium evolution of quantum fields in curved spacetime. We present the evolution for both the geometry and the matter (described by the quantum inflaton field)…
Inflation has been the leading early universe scenario for two decades, and has become an accepted element of the successful `cosmic concordance' model. However, there are many puzzling features of the resulting theory. It requires both…
We propose a model for early universe cosmology without the need for fundamental scalar fields. Cosmic acceleration and phenomenologically viable reheating of the universe results from a series of energy transitions, where during each…
Inflation may have been driven by a component which violated the Null-Energy Condition, thereby leading to {\it super inflation}. We provide the formalism to study cosmological perturbations when such a component is described by a scalar…
In order to solve the fine-tuning problem of the cosmological constant, we propose a simple model with the vacuum energy non-minimally coupled to the inflaton field. In this model, the vacuum energy decays to the inflaton during…
For the first time, we investigate the non-perturbative dynamics of single field inflation with a departure from slow-roll. Using simulations, we find that oscillatory features in the potential can drastically alter the course of inflation,…
Inflationary models, especially those with plateau-type potentials, are consistent with the cosmological data, but inflation itself does not resolve the initial singularity. This singularity is resolved, for example, by the idea of the…
We construct a class of viable bouncing models that are conformally related to cosmological inflation. There are three main difficulties in constructing such a model: (i) A stable (attractor) solution, (ii) A non-singular bounce, and (iii)…
A Gauss-Bonnet term naturally appears in the action for gravity when one considers the existence of space time with dimensions more than 1+3. A variety of inflationary models can be obtained within such a framework, once the scale factor…
Inflationary cosmology proposes that the early Universe undergoes accelerated expansion, driven, in simple scenarios, by a single scalar field, or inflaton. The form of the inflaton potential determines the initial spectra of density…
We consider a noncommutative (NC) inflationary model with a homogeneous scalar field minimally coupled to gravity. The particular NC inflationary setting produces entirely new consequences. We first analyze the free field case and…
We consider a novel model of cosmic inflation. In our model one does not need any specific matter field to drive inflation, but inflation stems from the microscopic, Planck scale structure of spacetime, thus being of quantum gravitational…
We calculate the power spectrum of adiabatic density perturbations in an open inflationary model in which inflation occurs in two stages. First an epoch of old inflation creates a large, smooth universe, solving the horizon and homogeneity…
We study an inflation mechanism based on attractor properties in cosmological evolutions of a spatially flat Friedmann-Robertson-Walker spacetime based on the Einstein-scalar field theory. We find a new way to get the Hamilton-Jacobi…
Whichever could be the real theory of gravitation, the corresponding low-energy effective lagrangian will probably contain higher derivative terms. In this work we study the general conditions on those terms in order to produce enough…