Related papers: Observational tests of inflation
Although the paradigm of inflation has been extensively studied to demonstrate how macroscopic inhomogeneities in our universe originate from quantum fluctuations, most of the established literature ignores the crucial role that…
Inflationary cosmology is successful in explaining a number of outstanding cosmological issues including the flatness, the horizon and the relic issues. More spectacular is the experimental confirmation of the structure as arose from the…
We construct a class of viable bouncing models that are conformally related to cosmological inflation. There are three main difficulties in constructing such a model: (i) A stable (attractor) solution, (ii) A non-singular bounce, and (iii)…
After a brief summary of general relativity and cosmology, we present the basic concepts underlying inflation, the currently best motivated models for the early Universe. We describe the simplest inflation models, based on a single scalar…
In the hope of avoiding model dependence of the cosmological observables, phenomenological parametrizations of Cosmic Inflation have recently been proposed. Typically, they are expressed in terms of two parameters associated with an…
Using techniques from loop quantum gravity, the standard theory of cosmological perturbations was recently generalized to encompass the Planck era. We now apply this framework to explore pre-inflationary dynamics. The framework enables us…
This article discusses density perturbations in inflationary models, offering a pedagogical description of how these perturbations are generated by quantum fluctuations in the early universe. A key feature of inflation is that that rapid…
These lectures provide a pedagogical introduction to inflation and the theory of cosmological perturbations generated during inflation which are thought to be the origin of structure in the universe.
This essay outlines the Holographic Space-time (HST) theory of cosmology and its relation to conventional theories of inflation. The predictions of the theory are compatible with observations, and one must hope for data on primordial…
We discuss the principles governing the selection of inflationary models for which preheating can affect the CMB. This is a (fairly small) subset of those models which have non-negligible entropy/isocurvature perturbations on large scales…
While cosmological inflation can erase primordial inhomogeneities, it is possible that inflation may not begin in a significantly inhomogeneous universe. This issue is particularly pressing in multifield scenarios, where even the…
In this dissertation, we introduce a general way of modeling inflation in a framework that is independent of the exact nature of the inflationary potential. Because of the choice of our initial conditions and the continuity of the scale…
We compute the rate with which super-Hubble cosmological fluctuations are decohered during inflation, by their gravitational interactions with unobserved shorter-wavelength scalar and tensor modes. We do so using Open Effective Field Theory…
We review the connection between inflationary models and observations and concentrate to describe models based on softly broken supersymmetry, in particular running mass models, and their predictions. We then present a fit of the spectral…
Models of cosmic inflation suggest that our universe underwent an early phase of accelerated expansion, driven by the dynamics of one or more scalar fields. Inflationary models make specific, quantitative predictions for several observable…
Inflation models make specific predictions for a tensor-scalar-scalar three-point correlation, or bispectrum, between one gravitational-wave (tensor) mode and two density-perturbation (scalar) modes. This tensor-scalar-scalar correlation…
After reviewing the general ideas of quantum cosmology (Wheeler-DeWitt equation, boundary conditions, interpretation of $\psi$), I discuss how these ideas can be tested observationally. Observational predictions differ for different choices…
Cosmological inflation is the dominating paradigm to account for observations of the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB). In this thesis, we study the phenomenology of a class of particularly well motivated models of inflation, known under…
We use the stochastic approach to investigate the measure for slow roll eternal inflation. The probability for the universe of a given Hubble radius can be calculated in this framework. In a solvable model, it is shown that the probability…
We note that the essential idea of inflation, that the universe underwent a brief period of accelerated expansion followed by a long period of decelerated expansion, can be encapsulated in a "closure condition" which relates the amount of…