Related papers: Reconstructing the Inflaton Potential
High resolution maps of the anisotropy of the microwave sky will yield invaluable clues as to the mechanisms involved in cosmic structure formation. One fundamental question they should answer is whether the fluctuations were Gaussian…
Gravitational fluctuations along the line-of-sight from the surface of last scatter to the observer distort the microwave background in several related ways: The fluctuations deflect the photon path (gravitational lensing), the decay of the…
Anisotropies in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) contain a wealth of information about the past history of the universe and the present values of cosmological parameters. I ouline some of the theoretical advances of the last few years.…
We update the search for features, due to transient reductions in inflaton's speed of sound, in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) angular power spectrum using Planck 2018 temperature, polarization and lensing data. We develop a new…
Given the recent detection of gravitational waves from individual sources it is almost a certainty that some form of background of gravitational waves will be detected in future. The most promising candidate for such a detection are…
Direct observations of gravitational waves will open in the near future new windows on the Universe. Among the expected sources, instabilities of rotating compact astrophysical objects are waited to be detected with some impatience as this…
I report on recent developments in the theory of cosmic background radiation perturbations. I describe ways of modeling alternatives to the canonical Gaussian theories within the standard framework of cosmological perturbation theory. Some…
I review various aspects of techniques for reconstructing the potential of the inflaton field from observations, with special emphasis on difficulties which might arise. While my view is that if inflation is to prove viable then most likely…
In this paper we develop the theory of clusterization of peaks in a Gaussian random field. We have obtained new mathematical results from this theory and the theory of percolation and have proposed a topological method of analysis of sky…
We investigate the stochastic gravitational wave background (SGWB) from cosmic domain walls (DWs) caused by quantum fluctuations of a light scalar field $\phi$ during inflation. Perturbations of $\phi$ remain almost constant after leaving…
We use a compilation of cosmic microwave anisotropy data (including the recent VSA, CBI and Archeops results), supplemented with an additional constraint on the expansion rate, to directly constrain the parameters of slow-roll inflation…
Recent results from the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe have been called a corroboration, or even a confirmation, of inflation. Yet, the results include features that require, at least, a significant distortion of what is usually meant…
In this paper we will analyse the constraints on a sub-Planckian excursion of a single inflaton field, which would yield a large tensor to scalar ratio, while explaining the temperature anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background (CMB)…
We study small field models of inflation, which, against previous expectations, yield significant Gravitational Wave (GW) signal while reproducing other measured observable quantities in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). We numerically…
Single gravitational-wave detectors face inherent limitations in detecting the anisotropy of the stochastic background. In this work, we explore the sensitivity to anisotropic backgrounds with a network of space-borne detectors. We find…
Pulsar Timing Array (PTA) observations have recently gathered substantial evidence for the existence of a gravitational wave background in the nHz frequency band. Searching for anisotropies in this signal is key to determining its origin,…
We review the recently found large-scale anomalies in the maps of temperature anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background. These include alignments of the largest modes of CMB anisotropy with each other and with geometry and direction…
With the growing number of gravitational-wave detections, particularly from binary black hole mergers, there is increasing anticipation that an astrophysical background, formed by an ensemble of faint, high-redshift events, will be observed…
Observed angular positions and redshifts of large-scale structure tracers such as galaxies are affected by gravitational waves through volume distortion and magnification effects. Thus, a gravitational wave background can in principle be…
We develop and examine the principles governing the formation of distortions in the cosmic microwave background. Distortions in the frequency or spectral distribution of the background probe the thermal history of the universe whereas those…