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If the assumption that physical space has a trivial topology is dropped, then the Universe may be described by a multiply connected Friedmann-Lema\^{\i}tre model on a sub-horizon scale. Specific candidates for the multiply connected space…
Machine learning lies at the heart of new possibilities for scientific discovery, knowledge generation, and artificial intelligence. Its potential benefits to these fields requires going beyond predictive accuracy and focusing on…
Equivariant models leverage prior knowledge on symmetries to improve predictive performance, but misspecified architectural constraints can harm it instead. While work has explored learning or relaxing constraints, selecting among…
Cosmic strings are topological defects possibly formed in the early Universe, which may be observable due to their gravitational effects on the cosmic microwave background radiation or gravitational wave experiments. To this effect it is…
We propose a decision criterion for segmenting the cosmic web into different structure types (voids, sheets, filaments, and clusters) on the basis of their respective probabilities and the strength of data constraints. Our approach is…
In this brief paper we revisit the Fisher information content of cosmological power spectra or two-point functions of Gaussian fields in order to comment on the assumption of Gaussian estimators and the use of parameter-dependent covariance…
Phenomenological models are widely used in cosmology in relation to constraining different cosmological models, with two common examples being cosmographic expansions and modeling the equation-of-state parameter of dark energy. This work…
The status of the standard cosmological model, also known as "LCDM" is described. With some simple assumptions, this model fits a wide range of data, with just six (or seven) free parameters. One should be skeptical about this claim, since…
We report on a series of experiments in which all decision trees consistent with the training data are constructed. These experiments were run to gain an understanding of the properties of the set of consistent decision trees and the…
Facing the advent of the next generation cosmological surveys we present a method to forecast knowledge gain on cosmological models. We propose this as a well defined and general tool to quantify the performance of different experiments in…
Cosmic strings provide a radically different paradigm for the formation of structure to the prevailing inflationary one. They afford some extra technical complications: for example, the calculation of the power spectrum of matter and…
The application of Bayesian methods in cosmology and astrophysics has flourished over the past decade, spurred by data sets of increasing size and complexity. In many respects, Bayesian methods have proven to be vastly superior to more…
The fundamental laws and constants of our universe seem to be finely tuned for life. The various multiverse hypotheses are popular explanations for the fine tuning. This paper reviews the four main suggestions on inference in the presence…
One of the main unsolved problems of cosmology is how to maximize the extraction of information from nonlinear data. If the data are nonlinear the usual approach is to employ a sequence of statistics (N-point statistics, counting statistics…
In the hope of avoiding model dependence of the cosmological observables, phenomenological parametrizations of Cosmic Inflation have recently been proposed. Typically, they are expressed in terms of two parameters associated with an…
[Abridged] Some cosmological theories propose that the observable universe is a small part of a much larger universe in which parameters describing the low-energy laws of physics vary from region to region. How can we reasonably assess a…
The suggestion that we occupy a privileged position near the centre of a large, nonlinear, and nearly spherical void has recently attracted much attention as an alternative to dark energy. Putting aside the philosophical problems with this…
We investigate our knowledge of early universe cosmology by exploring how much additional energy density can be placed in different components beyond those in the $\Lambda$CDM model. To do this we use a method to separate early- and…
Prediction in quantum cosmology requires a specification of the universe's quantum dynamics and its quantum state. We expect only a few general features of the universe to be predicted with probabilities near unity conditioned on the…
Dynamical systems techniques are a powerful tool to analyse systems of ordinary differential equations, written in an appropriate form. For a given theory of gravity, the cosmological field equations typically lead to a system of ordinary…