Related papers: Topological Defects with Broken Scale Invariance
Bayesian inference is a powerful tool in gravitational-wave astronomy. It enables us to deduce the properties of merging compact-object binaries and to determine how these mergers are distributed as a population according to mass, spin, and…
The gravitationally-driven evolution of cold dark matter dominates the formation of structure in the Universe over a wide range of length scales. While the longest scales can be treated by perturbation theory, a fully quantitative…
In order to quantitatively test the ability of averaged inhomogeneous cosmologies to correctly describe observations of the large scale properties of the Universe, we introduce a smoothed template metric corresponding to a constant spatial…
The Standard Cosmological Model of the 1980's is no more. I describe the definitive evidence that the density of matter is insufficient to result in a flat universe, as well as the mounting evidence that the cosmological constant is not…
The upcoming satellite missions MAP and Planck will measure the spectrum of fluctuations in the Cosmic Microwave Background with unprecedented accuracy. We discuss the prospect of using these observations to distinguish among proposed…
The hypothesis of the scale invariance of the macroscopic empty space, which intervenes through the cosmological constant, has led to new cosmological models. They show an accelerated cosmic expansion and satisfy several major cosmological…
Non-minimally coupled scalar field models are well-known for providing interesting cosmological features. These include a late time dark energy behavior, a phantom dark energy evolution without singularity, an early time inflationary…
Departures of the energy spectrum of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) from a perfect blackbody probe a fundamental property of the universe -- its thermal history. Current upper limits, dating back some 25 years, limit such spectral…
The evolution of cosmological large-scale perturbations is described in terms of the concordant model based on the recent discovery of cosmic vacuum. It is demonstrated that the process is robustly controlled by a few epoch-independent…
We use a high-accuracy computational code to investigate the precision with which cosmological parameters could be reconstructed by future cosmic microwave background (CMB) experiments, in particular the two satellite missions MAP and…
In the last decade, the study of the overall shape of the universe, called Cosmic Topology, has become testable by astronomical observations, especially the data from the Cosmic Microwave Background (hereafter CMB) obtained by WMAP and…
The basic strategy underlying models of spontaneous wave function collapse (collapse models) is to modify the Schroedinger equation by including nonlinear stochastic terms, which tend to localize wave functions in space in a dynamical…
A new scalar-tensor theory of gravity induced by dynamically broken scale invariance is proposed, and its cosmological implications are discussed. It is found that the model admits an inflation via the Hawking-Moss bubbling, but the…
We are at a specific period of modern cosmology, during which the large increase of the amount of data leads to the idea that the determination of cosmological parameters has been achieved with a rather good precision. There is a large…
We point out that polarization measurements as planned for the upcoming PLANCK mission can significantly enhance the accuracy of cosmic parameter estimation compared to the temperature anisotropy spectrum alone. In order to illustrate this,…
We argue that scale invariance is not anomalous in quantum field theory, provided it is broken cosmologically. We consider a locally scale invariant extension of the Standard Model of particle physics and argue that it fits both the…
The scenario of a cosmology with topological defects is surveyed starting from the field theoretic aspects and ending with a description of large-scale structure formation and magnetic field generation. (Lectures delivered at ICTP, Trieste,…
Examining the reverse evolution of the universe from the present, long before reaching Planck density dynamics one expects major modifications from the de-coherent thermal equations of state, suggesting a prior phase that has macroscopic…
The phenomenologically observed flatness - or near flatness - of spacetime cannot be understood as emerging from continuum Planck (or sub-Planck) scales using known physics. Using dimensional arguments it is demonstrated that any…
The lack of large-angle correlations in the observed microwave background temperature fluctuations persists in the final-year maps from WMAP and the first cosmological data release from Planck. We find a statistically robust and significant…