Related papers: An Alternative to Inflation
Among the three cosmological enigma solved by the theory of inflation, {\it viz.} (a) large scale flatness, (b) absence of monopoles and strings, and (c) structure formation, the first two are addressed from the viewpoint of the observed…
We describe the universe as a local, inhomogeneous spherical bubble embedded in a flat matter dominated FLRW universe. Generalized exact Friedmann equations describe the expansion of the universe and an early universe inflationary de Sitter…
In these lectures I review the standard hot big-bang cosmology, emphasizing its successes, its shortcomings, and its major challenges-developing a detailed understanding of the formation of structure in the Universe and identifying the…
If our universe underwent inflation, its entropy during the inflationary phase was substantially lower than it is today. Because a low-entropy state is less likely to be chosen randomly than a high-entropy one, inflation is unlikely to…
The standard model of cosmology is based on the hot Big Bang theory and the inflationary paradigm. Recent precise observations of the temperature and polarization anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background and the matter distribution…
In order to draw out the essential behavior of the universe, investigations of early universe cosmology often reduce the complex system to a simple integrable system. Inflationary models are of this kind as they focus on simple scalar field…
Inflationary cosmology proposes that the early Universe undergoes accelerated expansion, driven, in simple scenarios, by a single scalar field, or inflaton. The form of the inflaton potential determines the initial spectra of density…
We prove that a homogeneous and isotropic universe containing a scalar field with a power-law potential, $V(\phi )=A\phi ^{n}$, with $0<n<1$ and $A>0$ always develops a finite-time singularity at which the Hubble rate and its first…
Possibly, the most general action in the background of isotropic and homogeneous space-time has been considered to study the quantum evolution of the early universe, apart from a cosmological constant. The hermiticity of the effective…
We propose a new class of inflationary solutions to the standard cosmological problems (horizon, flatness, monopole,...), based on a modification of old inflation. These models do not require a potential which satisfies the normal…
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…
Inflation is considered one of the cornerstones of modern cosmology. However, the account of the origin of cosmic structure, as provided by the standard inflationary paradigm, is not fully satisfactory. The fundamental issue is the…
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 standard inflationary version of the origin of the cosmic structure as the result of the quantum fluctuations during the inflationary stage is less than fully satisfactory: how exactly does the Universe transit from a homogeneous and…
Most models of inflation have small parameters, either to guarantee sufficient inflation or the correct magnitude of the density perturbations. In this paper we show that, in supersymmetric theories with weak scale supersymmetry breaking,…
The mechanism for triggering the universe inflation could be that at very early periods the time variable was discrete instead of smooth. Alternatively, and perhaps equivalently, it could be the consequence that the metrics of the early…
An examination is made of the widely held belief that inflation is the only possible causal mechanism capable of generating density perturbations on scales well in excess of the Hubble radius. A simple proof is given, which relies only on…
In an inflationary regime driven by a free massive inflaton we derive within a genuinely gauge invariant approach the backreaction effects due to long wavelength scalar fluctuations on the effective Hubble factor and equation of state with…
This is a completely rewritten version of the talk I gave at the Philosophy of Cosmology conference in Tenerife, September 2014, which incorporates elements of my IFT Madrid Anthropics Conference talk. The original was too technical. The…
We review why the search for a causal explanation of the large scale properties of the universe supports the idea that an extended period of accelerated expansion, called inflation, preceded primordial nucleosynthesis. As a consequence of…