Related papers: Large-scale Structure from Quantum Fluctuations in…
The observable universe is fundamentally inhomogeneous and anisotropic. Quantum description of the generation of these inhomogeneities and anisotropies is ill-understood and unsatisfactory. After providing a brief account of the standard…
The cosmological model best capable of fitting current observational data features two separate epochs during which the Universe is accelerating. During the earliest stages of the Universe, such acceleration is known as cosmological…
The expansion of the Universe is understood to have accelerated during two epochs: in its very first moments during a period of Inflation and much more recently, at $z < 1$, when Dark Energy is hypothesized to drive cosmic acceleration. The…
We investigate a cosmological scenario in which the dark matter particles can be created during the evolution of the Universe. By regarding the Universe as an open thermodynamic system and using non-equilibrium thermodynamics, we examine…
The hot big-bang cosmology provides a reliable accounting of the Universe from about $10^{-2}\sec$ after the bang until the present, as well as a robust framework for speculating back to times as early as $10^{-43}\sec$. Cosmology faces a…
Perhaps the deepest mystery of our accelerating Universe in expansion is the existence of a tiny and rigid cosmological constant, $\Lambda$. Its size is many orders of magnitude below the expected one in the standard model of particle…
One of the prime pieces of evidence for dark matter is the observation of large overdense regions in the universe. Since we know from the cosmic microwave background that the regions that contained the most baryons when the universe was…
In this review, the formation, evolution, and decay of the large-scale structure of the Universe is discussed in the context of observational data, numerical simulations, and the Cosmological Standard Model (CSM). Problems concerning…
In the past decade, the importance of dissipation and fluctuation to inflationary dynamics has been realized and has led to a new picture of inflation called warm inflation. Although these phenomena are common to condensed matter systems,…
Inflation provides a natural mechanism to account for the origin of cosmic structures. The generation of primordial inhomogeneities during inflation can be understood via the spontaneous creation of quanta from the vacuum. We show that when…
The standard model of cosmology is based on the hot Big Bang theory and the inflationary paradigm. Recent precise observations of the temperature and polarization anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background and the matter distribution…
Quantum diffusion describes the inflow of vacuum quantum fluctuations as they get amplified by gravitational instability, and stretched to large distances during inflation. In this picture, the dynamics of the universe's expansion becomes…
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…
A short introduction to structure formation is given, followed by a discussion of the possible characteristics of the initial perturbations assuming a generic inflationary origin. Observational data related to large-scale structure and the…
A mechanism of inflation from higher dimensions compactification is studied. An Early Universe capable of providing exponential growth for some dimensions and exponential contraction for others, giving therefore an explanation for the big…
A timely combination of new theoretical ideas and observational discoveries has brought about significant advances in our understanding of cosmic evolution. Computer simulations have played a key role in these developments by providing the…
Cosmic rays of the highest energy, above the Greisen-Zatsepin-Kuzmin cut-off of the spectrum, may originate in decays of superheavy long-living X-particles. These particles may be produced in the early Universe from vacuum fluctuations…
By making use of a class of steep exponential type of potentials, which has been recently used to describe quintessential inflation, we show how a unified picture for both inflation, dark energy and dark matter can emerge entirely through…
We speculate that the early Universe was inside a primordial black hole. The interior of the the black hole is a dS background and the two spacetimes are separated on the surface of black hole's event horizon. We argue that this picture…
The origin of dark matter in the universe may be weakly interacting scalar particles produced by amplification of quantum fluctuations during a period of dilaton-driven inflation. We present two interesting cases, the case of small…