Related papers: Gravity's rainbow
We study the possible contribution of a stochastic gravitational wave background to the anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) in cold and mixed dark matter (CDM and MDM) models. We test this contribution against recent…
The inflationary paradigm is an important cornerstone of the concordance cosmological model. However, standard inflation cannot fully address the transition from an early homogeneous and isotropic stage, to another one lacking such…
We consider the effects of the quantum stress tensor fluctuations of a conformal field in generating gravity waves in inflationary models. We find a non-scale invariant, non-Gaussian contribution which depends upon the total expansion…
I discuss the current status of inflationary cosmology in light of the recent WMAP 3-year data release. The basic predictions of inflation are all supported by the data. Inflation also makes predictions which have not been well tested by…
Inflationary cosmology predicts that the particle horizon should be generically much bigger than the present-day Hubble radius, $1/H_0$. This implies a special regime of super-Hubble scale energy density fluctuations imprinted on the cosmic…
We compute energy density and strain induced by a primordial spectrum of gravitational waves on terrestrial- and space-based detectors (e.g., LIGO) as constrained by the COBE detection of microwave background anisotropy. For the case where…
Recent cosmological observations indicate the existence of extra light species, i.e., dark radiation. In this paper we show that signatures of the dark radiation are imprinted in the spectrum of inflationary gravitational waves. If the dark…
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…
Inflationary cosmology has, in the last few years,received a strong dose of support from observations. The fact that the fluctuation spectrum can be extracted from the inflationary scenario through an analysis that involves quantum field…
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…
In the pre-reheating era, following cosmic inflation and preceding radiation domination, the energy density may be dominated by an oscillating massive scalar condensate, such as is the case for quadratic chaotic inflation. We have found in…
In this article we review the theory of cosmological inflation with a particular focus on the beautiful connection it provides between the physics of the very small and observations of the very large. We explain how quantum mechanical…
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…
Unresolved and resolved sources of gravitational waves are at the origin of a stochastic gravitational wave background. While the computation of its mean density as a function of frequency in a homogeneous and isotropic universe is standard…
The spectrum of the gravitational wave background originating from quantum fluctuations during inflation is calculated numerically for various inflation models over a wide range of frequencies. We take into account four ingredients : the…
One of the predictions from simple inflation models is stochastic background of Gravitational Waves (\textbf{GW}), or literally what is called Primordial Gravitational Waves (\textbf{PGW}) with a nearly scale--invariant spectrum. To discuss…
We identify a new mechanism in supergravity theories which leads to successful inflation without any need for fine tuning. The simplest model yields a spectrum of density fluctuations tilted away from scale-invariance and negligible…
Inflationary cosmology is successful in explaining a number of outstanding cosmological issues including the flatness, the horizon and the relic issues. More spectacular is the experimental confirmation of the structure as arose from the…
We consider the impact of thermal inflation -- a short, secondary period of inflation that can arise in supersymmetric scenarios -- on the stochastic gravitational wave background. We show that while the primordial inflationary…
We consider the inflationary universe with a spectator scalar field coupled to a $U(1)$ gauge field and calculate curvature perturbation and gravitational waves (GWs). We find that the sourced GWs can be larger than the one from vacuum…