Related papers: Topological defects and open inflation
Motivated by the discovery of a plenitude of metastable vacua in a string landscape and the possibility of rapid tunneling between these vacua, we revisit the dynamics of a false vacuum bubble in a background de Sitter spacetime. We find…
We present a new general mechanism to generate curvature perturbations after the end of the slow-roll phase of inflation. Our model is based on the simple assumption that the potential driving inflation is characterized by an underlying…
It is conjectured that inflation, taking account of quantum gravity, leads to a discrete spectrum of cosmological perturbations, instead of the continuous Gaussian spectrum predicted by standard field theory in an unquantized background.…
An important prediction of inflation is the production of a primordial stochastic gravitational wave background. Observing this background is challenging due to the weakness of the signal and the simultaneous presence of an astrophysical…
We extend and generalize the seminal work of Brandenberger, Huang and Zhang on the formation of strings during chiral phase transitions(berger) and discuss the formation of abelian and non-abelian topological strings during such transitions…
We study the observable implications of an incomplete first order phase transition during inflation. In such a phase transition, the nucleated bubbles do not percolate and instead are continuously produced until the onset of reheating. The…
Quasi-conformal models are an appealing scenario that can offer naturally a strongly supercooled phase transition and a period of thermal inflation in the early Universe. A crucial aspect for the viability of these models is how the…
Cosmological inflation remains to be a unique mechanism of generation of plausible initial conditions in the early universe. In particular, it generates the primordial quasiclassical perturbations with power spectrum determined by the…
In this paper we will discuss analytically the perturbations created from a slowly rolling subdominant spectator field which decays much before the end of inflation. The quantum fluctuations of such a spectator field can seed perturbations…
We consider a perfectly homogeneous, isotropic and spatially flat universe which undergoes a sudden phase transition producing topological defects. We assume that these defects form a coherent network which scales like the background…
Our universe may have formed via bubble nucleation in an eternally-inflating background. Furthermore, the background may have a compact dimension---the modulus of which tunnels out of a metastable minimum during bubble nucleation---which…
We compute the spectrum of scalar and tensor metric perturbations generated, as amplified vacuum fluctuations, during an epoch of dilaton-driven inflation of the type occurring naturally in string cosmology. In the tensor case the…
A massive scalar field in a curved spacetime can propagate along the light cone, a causal pathology, which can, in principle, be eliminated only if the scalar couples conformally to the Ricci curvature of spacetime. This property mandates…
Scalar fields in the minimal supersymmetric standard model may have large field values during inflation. Because of approximate global symmetry, it is plausible that the phase directions of them are nearly massless during inflation and…
In the picture of eternal inflation as driven by a scalar potential with multiple minima, our observable universe resides inside one of many bubbles formed from transitions out of a false vacuum. These bubbles necessarily collide, upsetting…
In this paper we put forward the idea that the comoving Hubble horizon undergoes multiple stages of contraction (a.k.a. inflationary phase) and expansion. The observable inflation, that produces the CMB anisotropies and generates primordial…
We propose an open hybrid inflation scenario that produces an open universe with a `tilted' n>1 spectrum of metric perturbations. The model contains a symmetry breaking field that tunnels to its true vacuum, producing a single bubble inside…
The reheating of the universe after hybrid inflation proceeds through the nucleation and subsequent collision of large concentrations of energy density in the form of bubble-like structures moving at relativistic speeds. This generates a…
We provide a pedagogical overview of defect models of structure formation. We first introduce the concept of topological defect, and describe how to classify them. We then show how defects might be produced in phase transitions in the Early…
It is believed that the recent detection of large tensor perturbations strongly favors the inflation scenario in the early universe. This common sense depends on the assumption that Einstein's general relativity is valid at the early…