Related papers: A Causal Source which Mimics Inflation
With the recent measurements of temperature and polarization anisotropies in the microwave background by WMAP, we have entered a new era of precision cosmology, with the cosmological parameters of a Standard Cosmological Model determined to…
Could COBE DMR be detecting the imprint from a spectrum of gravitational waves generated during inflation? The conventional inflationary prediction had been that the cosmic microwave anisotropy is dominated by energy density fluctuations…
I discuss the interplay between inflation and microwave background anisotropies, stressing in particular the accuracy with which inflation predictions need to be made, and the importance of inflation as an underlying paradigm for…
Comparison of theobservedanisotropy with that predicted iadiabaticDM models suggest that much of thserved signal may be due to long wavelenh gravitational waves. In inflationary models this requires the generation of tensor fluctuations to…
Probing correlations among short and long-wavelength cosmological fluctuations is known to be decisive for deepening the current understanding of inflation at the microphysical level. Spectral distortions of the CMB can be caused by…
We argue that the lack of power exhibited by cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropies at large angular scales might be linked to the onset of inflation. We highlight observational features and theoretical hints that support this view,…
In the ``natural inflation'' model, the inflaton potential is periodic. We show that Planck scale physics may induce corrections to the inflaton potential, which is also periodic with a greater frequency. Such high frequency corrections…
In the early Universe matter can be described as a conformal invariant ultra-relativistic perfect fluid, which does not contribute, on classical level, to the evolution of the isotropic and homogeneous metric. If we suppose that there is…
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…
One of the major predictions of inflation is the existence of a stochastic background of cosmological gravitational waves (GW). These gravitational waves can induce significant temperature anisotropies in the Cosmic Microwave Background…
We re-examine approximations in the analytical calculation of the primordial spectrum of cosmological perturbation produced during inflation. Taking two inflation models (chaotic inflation and natural inflation) as examples, we numerically…
The problem of causal inference is to determine if a given probability distribution on observed variables is compatible with some causal structure. The difficult case is when the causal structure includes latent variables. We here introduce…
We asses the contribution to the observed large scale anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background radiation, arising from both gravity waves as well as adiabatic density perturbations, generated by a common inflationary mechanism in the…
We develop a model for correlations of cosmic microwave background anisotropy on the largest angular scales, based on standard causal geometrical relationships in slow-roll inflation. Unlike standard models based on quantized field modes,…
Cosmic strings formed during inflation are expected to be either diluted over super-Hubble distances, i.e., invisible today, or to have crossed our past light cone very recently. We discuss the latter situation in which a few strings…
The usual account for the origin of cosmic structure during inflation is not fully satisfactory, as it lacks a physical mechanism capable of generating the inhomogeneity and anisotropy of our Universe, from an exactly homogeneous and…
Observations of anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background by the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe suggest the possibility of oscillations in the primordial density perturbation. Such deviations from the usually assumed scale-free…
Recently, the Planck 2013 results showed possible evidence for a dipolar power modulation of the CMB temperature fluctuations at low--(\ell) multipoles. This anomaly might imply certain deviations from statistical isotropy. To incorporate…
We examine all-sky cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature maps on large angular scales to compare their consistency with two scenarios: the standard inflationary quantum picture, and a distribution constrained to have a universal…
Causal seed models, such as cosmological defects, generically predict a distinctly different structure to the CMB power spectrum than inflation, due to the behavior of the perturbations outside the horizon. We provide a general analysis of…