Related papers: Entropic issues in contemporary cosmology
I will discuss the development of inflationary theory and its present status, as well as some recent attempts to suggest an alternative to inflation. In particular, I will argue that the ekpyrotic scenario in its original form does not…
Recent theoretical progress indicates that spacetime and gravity emerge together from the entanglement structure of an underlying microscopic theory. These ideas are best understood in Anti-de Sitter space, where they rely on the area law…
Phantom Cosmology provides an unique opportunity to "connect" the phantom driven (low en- ergy meV scale) dark energy phase to the (high energy GUT scale) inflationary era. This is possible because the energy density increases in phantom…
We show why the universe started in an unstable de Sitter state. The quantum origin of our universe implies one must take a `top down' approach to the problem of initial conditions in cosmology, in which the histories that contribute to the…
One resolution of the ancient cosmic singularity, i.e., the Big Bang Singularity (BBS), is to assume an inflationary stage preceded by a long enough static state in which the universe and its physical properties would oscillate around…
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…
Penrose proposed that the big bang singularity should be constrained by requiring that the Weyl curvature vanishes there. The idea behind this past hypothesis is attractive because it constrains the initial conditions for the universe in…
The evolution of the cosmological perturbations is studied in the context of the Randall-Sundrum brane world scenario, in which our universe is realized on a three-brane in the five dimensional Anti-de Sitter(AdS) spacetime. We develop a…
We calculate how primordial anisotropies in the background space-time affect the evolution of cosmological perturbations for bouncing alternatives to inflation, like ekpyrosis and the matter bounce scenario. We find that the leading order…
Inflation, a period of exponential expansion in the early Universe, is considered an important part of the standard $\Lambda$CDM cosmological model, and plays a crucial role in explaining a wide range of current observations. The standard…
The braneworld cosmology, in which our universe is imbedded as a hypersurface in a higher dimensional bulk, has the peculiar property that the inflationary consistency relation derived in a four-dimensional cosmology persists. This…
We are investigating if the Jeans instability criteria mandading a low entropy,low temperature initial pre inflation state configuration can be recociled with thermal conditions of temperature at or above ten to the 12 power Kelvin, or…
Following a paper by Berman and Marinho Jr (2001), where it was established an equation of state (p=-(1/3)rho), for the very early Universe, under which, Einstein's equations with lambda=0, render a scale-factor proportional to the time…
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…
We demonstrate that the initial conditions for inflation are met when D5 and \bar{D}5 branes annihilate. This scenario uses Sen's conjecture that a co-dimension two vortex forms on the worldvolume of the annihilated 5-brane system.…
We study quantum gravity constraints on inflationary model building. Our approach is based on requiring the entropy associated to a given inflationary model to be less than that of the de Sitter entropy. We give two prescriptions for…
We provide a realisation of a singularity-free inflationary universe in the form of a simple cosmological model dominated at early times by a single minimally coupled scalar field with a physically based potential. The universe starts…
Entanglement entropy for a spatial partition of a quantum system is studied in theories which admit a dual description in terms of the anti-de Sitter (AdS) gravity one dimension higher. A general proof of the holographic formula which…
We propose a large class of nonsingular cosmologies of arbitrary spatial curvature whose cosmic history is determined by a primeval dynamical $\Lambda (t)$-term. For all values of the curvature, the models evolve between two extreme de…
We investigate the behavior of the entanglement entropy of space in the primordial phase of the universe before the beginning of cosmic inflation. We argue that in this phase the entanglement entropy of a region of space grows from a…