Related papers: Early structure formation with cold plus hot dark …
Recent developments in inflation model building, based on supersymmetry, have produced compelling models in which strings are produced at the end of inflation. In such models the cosmological perturbations are seeded both by the defects and…
In cosmological models where local cosmic strings are formed at the end of a period of inflation, the perturbations are seeded both by the defects and by the quantum fluctuations. In a subset of these models, for example those based on…
A better understanding of the formation of large-scale structure in the Universe is arguably the most pressing question in cosmology. The most compelling and promising theoretical paradigm, Inflation + Cold Dark Matter, holds that the…
It has recently been shown [1] that light vector particles produced from inflationary fluctuations can give rise to the dark matter in the Universe. A similar mechanism has been discussed in [2] for a non-minimally coupled scalar enjoying a…
It is tempting to inflate along one of the many flat directions that arise in supersymmetric theories. The required flatness of the potential to obtain sufficient inflation and to not overproduce density fluctuations occurs naturally.…
Thermal inflation was proposed as a mechanism to dilute the density of cosmological moduli. Thermal inflation is driven by a complex scalar field possessing a large vacuum expectation value and a very flat potential, called a `flaton'. Such…
Axions are produced during a period of dilaton-driven inflation by amplification of quantum fluctuations. We show that for some range of string cosmology parameters and some range of axion masses, primordial axions may constitute a large…
Thermal fluctuations provide the main source of large scale density perturbations in warm inflationary models of the early universe. For the first time, general results are obtained for the power spectrum in the case when the friction…
The formation of structure in the Universe offers some of the most powerful evidence in favour of the existence of dark matter in the Universe. We summarize recent work by ourselves and our collaborators, using linear and quasi-linear…
We show that it is possible to combine an early phase of String Gas Cosmology which can explain the origin of the observed structures on cosmological scales with a short later period of power law inflation which creates spatial flatness.…
We describe the results of high-resolution numerical simulations of string-induced structure formation in open universes and those with a non-zero cosmological constant. For models with $\Gamma = \Omega h = 0.1 - 0.2$ and a cold dark matter…
We examine the effects of cosmic strings on structure formation and on the ionization history of the universe. While Gaussian perturbations from inflation are known to provide the dominant contribution to the large scale structure of the…
We propose an alternative scenario to cosmic inflation for producing the initial seeds of cosmic structures. The cosmological fluctuations are generated by thermal fluctuation of the energy density of the ideal string gas in three compact…
If inflation scale is high, light scalars acquire large quantum fluctuations during inflation.If sufficiently long-lived, they will give rise to CDM isocurvature perturbations, which are highly constrained by the Planck data. Focusing on…
We describe the detailed study and results of high-resolution numerical simulations of string-induced structure formation in open universes and those with a non-zero cosmological constant. The effect from small loops generated from the…
We study the cosmology of axions in the post-inflationary scenario, where random initial conditions and the ensuing string-domain-wall network generate an isocurvature power spectrum. Axions radiated from strings behave as warm, wave-like…
Inflation arises in supersymmetric grand unified theories (susy GUTs) without fine tuning and cosmic strings usually form at the end of inflation. Hence both strings and inflation contribute to the density perturbations in the very early…
At its very beginning, the universe is believed to have grown exponentially in size via the mechanism of inflation. The almost scale-invariant density perturbation spectrum predicted by inflation is strongly supported by cosmological…
Following inflation, the Universe may pass through an early matter-dominated phase supported by the oscillating inflaton condensate. Initially small fluctuations in the condensate grow gravitationally on subhorizon scales and can collapse…
This thesis is dedicated to the study of inflationary scenarios based on string theory. Inflation is a brief period of accelerated expansion in the very early Universe which gives natural explanations for problems of the Standard Big Bang…