Related papers: Observational tests of inflation
Inflation creates large-scale cosmological density perturbations that are characterized by an isotropic, homogeneous, and Gaussian random distribution about a locally flat background. Even in a flat universe, the spatial curvature measured…
Inflation provides a unified paradigm for understanding the isotropy of the cosmic microwave background (CMB), the flatness problem, and the origin of large-scale structure. Although the physics responsible for inflation is not yet well…
Observational Cosmology has indeed made very rapid progress in recent years. The ability to quantify the universe has largely improved due to observational constraints coming from structure formation Measurements of CMB anisotropy and, more…
We review the prospects for detecting tensor modes generated during inflation by CMB polarization experiments and by searching for a stochastic gravitational wave background with laser interferometers in space. We tackle the following two…
One way to judge the impact of the inflation concept is to consider where cosmology might be today without it. The Einstein-de Sitter model would not have been so keenly defended, and there might have been more interest in negative space…
The eternal inflation scenario predicts that our observable universe resides inside a single bubble embedded in a vast inflating multiverse. We present the first observational tests of eternal inflation, performing a search for cosmological…
These lecture notes intend to form a short pedagogical introduction to inflationary cosmology, highlighting selected areas of recent progress such as reheating and the theory of cosmological perturbations. Problems of principle for…
A brief account is given of large-scale structure modelling based on the assumption that the initial perturbations arise from inflation. A recap is made of the implications of inflation for large-scale structure; under the widely applicable…
We discuss how primordial non-Gaussianity of the curvature perturbation helps to constrain models of the early universe. Observations are consistent with Gaussian initial conditions, compatible with the predictions of the simplest models of…
Modern cosmology provides a connection between the physics of particles and fields and observational cosmology. Making use of this link, a wealth of new observational data can be utilized to explore and constrain theories of fundamental…
We study the implications of the recently proposed Trans-Planckian Censorship Conjecture (TCC) for early universe cosmology and in particular inflationary cosmology. The TCC leads to the conclusion that if we want inflationary cosmology to…
Models of cosmic inflation posit an early phase of accelerated expansion of the universe, driven by the dynamics of one or more scalar fields in curved spacetime. Though detailed assumptions about fields and couplings vary across models,…
It is sometimes argued that observation of tensor modes from inflation would provide the first evidence for quantum gravity. However, in the usual inflationary formalism, also the scalar modes involve quantised metric perturbations. We…
Observable quantities in cosmology are dimensionless, and therefore independent of the units in which they are measured. This is true of all physical quantities associated with the primordial perturbations that source cosmic microwave…
The observed power spectrum of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) is consistent with inflationary cosmology, which predicts a nearly scale-invariant power spectrum of quantum fluctuations of the inflaton field as they exit the Hubble…
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…
The hypothesis that the Universe underwent a period of exponential expansion at very early times has become the most popular theory of the early Universe. Not only does it solve some of the problems of standard big bang cosmology, but it…
Supersymmetry plays a fundamental role in the radiative stability of many inflationary models. Spontaneous breaking of the symmetry inevitably leads to fields with masses of order the Hubble scale during inflation. When these fields couple…
In this review I briefly describe the evolution of the inflationary theory from the scenario based on the idea of supercooling and expansion in the false vacuum toward the theory of eternally expanding self-reproducing inflationary…
Various scenarios of the initial inflation of the universe are distinguished by the choice of a scalar field {\em potential} $U(\phi)$ which simulates a {\it temporarily} non--vanishing {\em cosmological term}. Our new method, which…