Related papers: Inflation and the microwave background
Most of the analysis of the Cosmic Microwave Background relies on the assumption of statistical isotropy. However, given some recent evidence pointing against isotropy, as for instance the observed alignment of different multipoles on large…
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…
This paper is aimed to study the compelling issue of cosmic inflation during rapid oscillations using the framework of non-minimal derivative coupling. To this end, an anisotropic and homogeneous Bianchi I background is considered. In this…
I review the current status of the theory of Cosmic Inflation. My discussion covers the motivation and implementation of the idea, as well as an analysis of recent successes and open questions. There is a special discussion of the physics…
In forthcoming years, connections between cosmology and particle physics will be made increasingly important with the advent of a new generation of cosmic microwave background (CMB) experiments. Here, we review a number of these links. Our…
Forthcoming cosmic microwave background experiments (CMB) will provide precise new tests of structure-formation theories. The geometry of the Universe may be determined robustly, and the classical cosmological parameters, such as the…
We discuss a new test of inflation from the harmonic pattern of peaks in the cosmic microwave background radiation angular power spectrum. By characterizing the features of alternate models and revealing signatures essentially unique to…
The cosmic microwave background (CMB) provides a snapshot of the early Universe when matter began to become structured and has been the focus of several recent observational campaigns. In this Perspective, we discuss the results from these…
A brief account is given of large-scale structure modelling based on the assumption that the initial perturbations arise from inflation. A recap is made of the implications of inflation for large-scale structure; under the widely applicable…
This article gives a brief overview of some of the theory behind the inflationary cosmology, and discusses prospects for constraining inflation using observations. Particular care is given to the question of falsifiability of inflation or…
In these lectures I review the standard hot big-bang cosmology, emphasizing its successes, its shortcomings, and its major challenge---a detailed understanding of the formation of structure in the Universe. I then discuss the motivations…
A period of inflation in the early universe produces a nearly scale-invariant spectrum of gravitational waves over a huge range in wavelength. If the amplitude of this gravitational wave background is large enough to be detectable with…
The physics of the origin and evolution of CMB anisotropies is described. I explain the idea and status of cosmic parameter estimation and follow it up with critical comments on its dependence on model assumptions and initial conditions.
Slow-roll inflation generically makes several predictions: a flat Universe, primordial adiabatic density perturbations, and a stochastic gravity-wave background. Each inflation model will further predict specific relations between the…
We present the status of our study into the feasibility of estimating the parameters of inflation from planned satellite observations of the anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background (CMB).We describe a perturbative procedure for…
Inflation has been the driving idea in cosmology for two decades and is a pillar of the New Cosmology. The inflationary paradigm has now passed its first round of significant tests, with two of its three basics predictions confirmed at…
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 propose an inflationary primordial feature model that can explain both the large and small-scale anomalies in the currently measured cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropy spectra, revealing a clip of adventurous history of the…
We present accurate predictions of the correlation function of hotspots in the microwave background radiation for gaussian theories such as those predicted in most inflation models. The correlation function of peaks above a certain…
We construct a class of single small field models of inflation that can predict, contrary to popular wisdom, an observable gravitational wave signal in the cosmic microwave background anisotropies. The spectral index, its running, the…