Related papers: Characteristics of Cosmic Time
Beginning with the principle that a closed mechanical composite system is timeless, time can be defined by the regular changes in a suitable position coordinate (clock) in the observing part, when one part of the closed composite observes…
In many interesting models, including superstring theories, a negative vacuum energy is predicted. Although this effect is usually regarded as undesirable from a cosmological point of view, we show that this can be the basis for a new…
In the present paper, we use the holographic approach to describe the early-time acceleration and the late-time acceleration eras of our Universe in a unified manner. Such ``holographic unification'' is found to have a correspondence with…
Despite the ultraviolet problems with canonical quantum gravity, as an effective field theory its infrared phenomena should enjoy fully quantum mechanical unitary time evolution. Currently this is not possible, the impediment being what is…
I describe a general approach to characterizing cosmological inflation outside the standard slow-roll approximation, based on the Hamilton-Jacobi formulation of scalar field dynamics. The basic idea is to view the equation of state of the…
We analyze the emergence of classical cosmological spacetimes in quantum cosmology by computing the reduced density matrix for long-wavelength curvature perturbations. Starting from standard Hartle--Hawking and tunneling boundary…
For two decades the hot big-bang model as been referred to as the standard cosmology -- and for good reason. For just as long cosmologists have known that there are fundamental questions that are not answered by the standard cosmology and…
The current state of cosmology is easy to summarize: a very successful standard model -- the hot big-bang cosmology -- that accounts for the evolution of the Universe from 10^{-2} sec until the present; bold ideas based upon early-Universe…
We put forward a multi-time theory, in frame of which the cosmic acceleration is a natural phenomenon without cosmological constant or anything like that. The main point of this theory is that each of the gravity interaction and…
We find that general relativity can be naturally free of cosmological singularities. Several nonsingular models are currently available that either assume ad hoc matter contents, or are nonsingular only over a sector of solution space of…
In this talk we discuss three different issues. First of all, there exist several proposals how to solve cosmological problems by adiabatic expansion of the Universe, without any use of inflation. We explain why these models do not solve…
It is shown that the space-time with a conical singularity, which describes a thin cosmic string, is hyperbolic in the sense that a unique H^1 solution exists to the initial value problem for the wave equation with a certain class of…
We present an up to cubic curvature correction to General Relativity with the following features: (i) its vacuum spectrum solely consists of a graviton and is ghost-free, (ii) it possesses well-behaved black hole solutions which coincide…
We propose a holographic description of four-dimensional single-scalar inflationary universes, and show how cosmological observables, such as the primordial power spectrum, are encoded in the correlation functions of a three-dimensional…
An introductory account is given of the modern understanding of the physics of the early Universe. Particular emphasis is placed on the paradigm of cosmological inflation, which postulates a period of accelerated expansion during the…
This paper discusses the problem of inflation in the context of Friedmann-Robertson-Walker Cosmology. We show how, after a simple change of variables, one can quantize the problem in a way which parallels the classical discussion. The…
Cosmic inflation is arguably the most favoured paradigm of the very early Universe. It postulates an early phase of fast, nearly exponential, and accelerated expansion. Inflationary models are capable of explaining the overall flatness and…
The Hamiltonian structure of spacetimes with two commuting Killing vector fields is analyzed for the purpose of addressing the various problems of time that arise in canonical gravity. Two specific models are considered: (i) cylindrically…
Observational tests during the next decade may determine if the evolution of the Universe can be understood from fundamental physical principles, or if special initial conditions, coincidences, and new, untestable physical laws must be…
A basic modern picture of the universe is given here. The lectures start from the historical ideas of a static universe. Then I move on to Newtonian cosmology and derive the main cosmological equations in the framework of Newtonian…