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Many models of supersymmetry breaking involve particles with weak scale mass and Planck mass suppressed couplings. Coherent production of such particles in the early universe destroys the successful predictions of nucleosynthesis. We show…
The emergence of time in the matter-gravity system is addressed within the context of the inflationary paradigm. A quantum minisuperspace-homogeneous minimally coupled inflaton system is studied with suitable initial conditions leading to…
Natural (axionic) inflation provides a well-motivated and predictive scheme for the description of the early universe. It leads to sizeable primordial tensor modes and thus a high mass scale of the inflationary potential. Naively this seems…
We briefly discuss cosmic inflation, which is the dominant paradigm for the generation of the large scale structure in the Universe and also for arranging for the initial conditions of the hot Big Bang. We then present quintessential…
Recent measurements of temperature fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) indicate that the Universe is flat and that large-scale structure grew via gravitational infall from primordial adiabatic perturbations. Both of these…
In these lectures I focus on early universe models which can explain the currently observed structure on large scales. I begin with a survey of inflationary cosmology, the current paradigm for understanding the origin of the universe as we…
One of the major pillars of modern cosmology theory is a period of accelerating expansion in the early universe. This accelerating expansion, or inflation, must be sustained for at least 30 e--foldings. One mechanism used to drive the…
We present a simple model where a scalar field is responsible for cosmic inflation and generates the seed for structure formation, while its thermal relic abundance explains dark matter in the universe. The inflaton self-coupling also…
We present an explicit observationally acceptable model for evolution from inflation to the present epoch under the assumption that the entropy and matter of the familiar universe are from gravitational particle production at the end of…
We assume the validity of the Standard Model up to an arbitrary high-energy scale and discuss what information on the early stages of the Universe can be extracted from a measurement of the Higgs mass. For Mh < 130 GeV, the Higgs potential…
We propose an intuitive framework for studying the problem of initial conditions in slow-roll inflation. In particular, we consider a universe at high, but sub-Planckian energy density and analyze the circumstances under which it is…
Most models of inflation have small parameters, either to guarantee sufficient inflation or the correct magnitude of the density perturbations. In this paper we show that, in supersymmetric theories with weak scale supersymmetry breaking,…
We consider cosmological scenarios in which density perturbations are generated by the quantum fluctuations of the inflaton field at early times; the late time dynamics involves a modulus which first dominates the energy density of the…
Cosmic inflation is envisioned as the ``most likely'' start for the observed universe. To give substance to this claim, a framework is needed in which inflation can compete with other scenarios and the relative likelihood of all scenarios…
Cosmic inflation provides a compelling framework for explaining several observed features of our Universe, but its viability depends on an efficient reheating phase that converts the inflaton's energy into Standard Model particles. This…
We propose a mechanism for generating an inflationary phase in the early universe without resorting to any type of scalar field(s). Instead, this accelerated expansion is driven by a dynamical "cosmological constant" in the framework of…
A wide variety of vacua, and their cosmological realization, may provide an explanation for the apparently anthropic choices of some parameters of particle physics and cosmology. If the probability on various parameters is weighted by…
We find the best-fit cosmological parameters for a scenario of inflation with only the sufficient amount of accelerated expansion for the $\lambda\phi^4$ potential. While for the simplest scenario of chaotic inflation all observable…
Within the framework of an explicit dynamical model, in which we calculate the radiatively-corrected, tree-level potential that sets up inflation, we show that the inflaton can be a significant part of dark matter today. We exhibit…
Within supersymmetry we provide an example where the inflaton sector is derived from a gauge invariant polynomial of SU(N) or SO(N) gauge theory. Inflation in our model is driven by multi-flat directions, which assist accelerated expansion.…