Related papers: Summary; Inflation and Traditions of Research
We discuss the possibility that the inflationary paradigm, undoubtfully today's best framework to understand all the present cosmological data, may still have some viable challengers. The underlying idea for such discussions is that…
Informed by a quantum information perspective, we interpret cosmological expansion of space as growing entanglement between underlying degrees of freedom. In particular, we focus on inflationary cosmology, which, while being a successful…
Inflationary cosmology has become one of the cornerstones of modern cosmology. Inflation was the first theory within which it was possible to make predictions about the structure of the Universe on large scales, based on causal physics. The…
An introductory account is given of the inflationary cosmology, which postulates a period of accelerated expansion during the Universe's earliest stages. The historical motivation is briefly outlined, and the modelling of the inflationary…
The inflationary scenario is not the only paradigm of early universe cosmology which is consistent with current observations. General criteria will be presented which any successful early universe model must satisfy. Various ways, including…
An epoch of accelerated expansion, or inflation, in the early universe solves several cosmological problems. While there are many models of inflation only recently has it become possible to discriminate between some of the models using…
Despite its central role in modern cosmology, doubts are often expressed as to whether cosmological inflation is really a falsifiable theory. We distinguish two facets of inflation, one as a theory of initial conditions for the hot big bang…
The current status of early universe cosmology can be summarized as precision, but inherently limited, data requiring explanation from precision and robust theory. Specifically inflation is presently the single concrete hope for solving the…
Inflation is the currently accepted paradigm for the beginnings of the Universe. To explain the observed almost scale invariant spectrum of density perturbations with only a slight spectral tilt, inflation must have been "slow roll", that…
In a previous paper we proposed a new approach to the beginning of inflation -- a lingering universe. The universe begins in a lingering state with a nearly vanishing Hubble parameter. This calls into question the absolute age of the…
After 25 years of its existence, inflationary theory gradually becomes the standard cosmological paradigm. However, we still do not know which of the many versions of inflationary cosmology will be favored by the future observational data.…
Inflation is a bold and expansive extension of the Standard Cosmology. It holds the promise to extend our understanding of the Universe to within 10^{-32}sec of the big bang and answer most of the pressing questions in cosmology. Its…
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…
The notion of inflation (past or present) in standard cosmological models is shown to be a consequence of a sufficiently high second law entropy production from the internal heating of the universal expansion. The longitudinal viscous…
This paper is intended to offer a pedagogical treatment of cosmological modeling and inflationary cosmology. In recent years, inflation has become accepted as a standard scenario making predictions that are testable by observations of the…
I show that the de Sitter Equilibrium cosmology generically predicts observable levels of curvature in the Universe today. The predicted value of the curvature depends only on the ratio of the density of non-relativistic matter to energy…
Alan Guth introduced cosmologists to inflation at the 1980 Texas Symposium. Since, inflation has had almost as much impact on cosmology as the big-bang model itself. However, unlike the big-bang model, it has little observational support.…
Understanding the behavior of the universe at large depends critically on insights about the smallest units of matter and their fundamental interactions. Inflationary cosmology is a highly successful framework for exploring these…
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 has been the leading early universe scenario for two decades, and has become an accepted element of the successful `cosmic concordance' model. However, there are many puzzling features of the resulting theory. It requires both…