Related papers: A New Test of Inflation
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…
The observational status of inflation after the Planck 2013 and 2015 results and the BICEP2/Keck Array and Planck joint analysis is discussed. These pedagogical lecture notes are intended to serve as a technical guide filling the gap…
In this brief review we will discuss how a well motivated particle theory beyond the eletroweak Standard Model provides ingredients and conditions for a successful inflation. We will mainly focus on a low energy supersymmetric Standard…
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…
We update the constraints on possible features in the primordial inflationary density perturbation spectrum by using the latest data from the WMAP7 and ACT Cosmic Microwave Background experiments. The inclusion of new data significantly…
Future observations of 21~cm emission using HI intensity mapping will enable us to probe the large scale structure of the Universe over very large survey volumes within a reasonable observation time. We demonstrate that the…
We propose a test of single-scalar inflation based on using the well-measured scalar power spectrum to reconstruct the tensor power spectrum, up to a single integration constant. Our test is a sort of integrated version of the single-scalar…
A recent paper argued that it is not possible to infer the energy scale of inflation from the amplitude of tensor fluctuations in the Cosmic Microwave Background, because the usual connection is substantially altered if there are a large…
We consider a novel model of cosmic inflation. In our model one does not need any specific matter field to drive inflation, but inflation stems from the microscopic, Planck scale structure of spacetime, thus being of quantum gravitational…
Observable quantities in cosmology are dimensionless, and therefore independent of the units in which they are measured. This is true of all physical quantities associated with the primordial perturbations that source cosmic microwave…
I review two different connections between particle theory and early-Universe cosmology: (1) Cosmic-microwave-background (CMB) tests of inflation and (2) particle dark matter. The inflationary predictions of a flat Universe and a nearly…
Observations of the temperature anisotropies in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) radiation show that the models of inflation with the monomial potentials are inconsistent with the allowed $n_s-r$ bounds. However certain monomial…
We show that inflationary cosmology may be used to test the statistical predictions of quantum theory at very short distances and at very early times. Hidden-variables theories, such as the pilot-wave theory of de Broglie and Bohm, allow…
If the initial state of the inflaton field is taken to have a thermal distribution instead of the conventional zero particle vacuum state then the curvature power spectrum gets modified by a temperature dependent factor such that the…
The eternal inflation scenario predicts that our observable universe resides inside a single bubble embedded in a vast inflating multiverse. We present the first observational tests of eternal inflation, performing a search for cosmological…
We investigate the quantum cosmological tunneling scenario for inflationary models. Within a path-integral approach, we derive the corresponding tunneling probability distribution. A sharp peak in this distribution can be interpreted as the…
The most important criteria for a successful inflation are to explain the observed temperature anisotropy in the cosmic microwave background radiation, and exiting inflation in a vacuum where it can excite the Standard Model quarks and…
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…
Inflation is considered one of the cornerstones of modern cosmology. However, the account of the origin of cosmic structure, as provided by the standard inflationary paradigm, is not fully satisfactory. The fundamental issue is the…
I review the general aspects of cosmological parameter estimation from observations of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature anisotropies in the framework of inflationary adiabatic models. The most recent CMB datasets are…