Related papers: Imprints of a Primordial Preferred Direction on th…
Primordial quantum fluctuations produced by inflation are conventionally assumed to be statistically homogeneous, a consequence of translational invariance. In this paper we quantify the potentially observable effects of a small violation…
Statistical isotropy of primordial perturbations is a common assumption in cosmology, but it is an assumption that should be tested. To this end, we develop cosmic microwave background statistics for a primordial power spectrum that depends…
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…
Could COBE DMR be detecting the imprint from a spectrum of gravitational waves generated during inflation? The conventional inflationary prediction had been that the cosmic microwave anisotropy is dominated by energy density fluctuations…
We show that inflationary models with broken rotational invariance generate testable off-diagonal signatures in the correlation between the $\mu$-type distortion and temperature fluctuations of the cosmic microwave background. More…
Temperature anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background offers a test of the fundamental symmetry of spacetime during cosmic inflation. Violation of rotational symmetry yields a distinct signature in the power spectrum of primordial…
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…
The cosmic microwave background radiation defines a preferred cosmic rest frame, and inflationary cosmological theories predict that the microwave background temperature fluctuations should be statistically isotropic in this rest frame. For…
Observations of anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background by the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe suggest the possibility of oscillations in the primordial density perturbation. Such deviations from the usually assumed scale-free…
Future cosmic microwave background polarization experiments will search for evidence of primordial tensor modes at large angular scales, in the multipole range $4 \leq \ell \leq 50.$ Because in that range there is some mild evidence of…
We study the gravitational effects of a planar domain wall on quantum fluctuations of a massless scalar field during inflation. By obtaining an exact solution of the scalar field equation in de Sitter space, we show that the gravitational…
We study the effects of sudden change in the sound velocity on primordial curvature perturbation spectrum in inflationary cosmology, assuming that the background evolution satisfies the slow-roll condition throughout. It is found that the…
Inflationary cosmology provides a natural mechanism for the generation of primordial perturbations which seed the formation of observed cosmic structure and lead to specific signals of anisotropy in the cosmic microwave background…
Long-wavelength gravitational waves can induce significant temperature anisotropy in the cosmic microwave background. Distinguishing this from anisotropy induced by energy density fluctuations is critical for testing inflationary cosmology…
Sudden violations of the slow-roll regime during inflation, a natural prediction of many UV-complete inflationary models, give rise to sharp features in the primordial power spectrum. At large scales, these features provide a unique window…
Inflation may provide unique insight into the physics at the highest available energy scales that cannot be replicated in any realistic terrestrial experiment. Features in the primordial power spectrum are generically predicted in a wide…
We study the implications of deformed quantum algebras for the generation of primordial perturbations from slow-roll inflation. Specifically, we assume that the quantum commutator of the inflaton's amplitude and momentum in Fourier space…
We study the effects of various phenomena which may have happened in the early universe on the spectrum of inflationary gravitational waves. The phenomena include phase transitions, entropy productions from non-relativistic matter, the…
We examine cosmological perturbations in a dynamical theory of inflation in which an Abelian gauge field couples directly to the inflaton, breaking conformal invariance. When the coupling between the gauge field and the inflaton takes a…
If the initial quantum state of the primordial perturbations broke rotational invariance, that would be seen as a statistical anisotropy in the angular correlations of the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR) temperature…