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The inflationary paradigm has transformed our understanding of the early universe; yet most inflationary models are considered geodesically past-incomplete, suggesting a beginning of time or a primordial Big Bang singularity. The…
In the primordial universe, fields with mass much larger than the mass-scale of the event-horizon (such as the Hubble parameter in inflation) exist ubiquitously, and can be excited from time to time and oscillate quickly around their…
During inflation, there is a preferred reference frame in which the expansion of the background spacetime is spatially isotropic. In contrast to Minkowski spacetime, observables can depend on the velocity of the system with respect to this…
Eternal inflation produces pocket universes with all physically allowed vacua and histories. Some of these pocket universes might contain a phase of slow-roll inflation, some might undergo cycles of cosmological evolution and some might…
In this letter, we argue that the past of the Universe, extrapolated from standard physics and measured cosmological parameters, might be a non-singular bounce. We also show that, in this framework, quite stringent constraints can be put on…
The inflationary scenario has become the paradigm of early universe cosmology, and - in conjuction with ideas from superstring theory - has led to speculations about an "inflationary multiverse". From a point of view of phenomenology, the…
Determining the initial state of the universe is a challenging problem in quantum cosmology and we argue that the issue is intractable if the basic postulates of quantum mechanics are not modified in a nontrivial way. Namely a "standard"…
In the framework of scalar-tensor theories of gravity, we construct a new kind of cosmological model that conflates inflation and ekpyrosis. During a phase of conflation, the universe undergoes accelerated expansion, but with crucial…
The aim of this paper is to show, that the 'oscillating universe' is a viable alternative to inflation. We remind that this model provides a natural solution to the flatness or entropy and to the horizon problem of standard cosmology. We…
Inflationary cosmology explains the homogeneity and large-scale structure of the universe through a brief epoch of accelerated expansion following the Big Bang. Cyclic cosmologies, in contrast, describe a universe undergoing successive…
Loop quantum cosmology provides a nice solution of avoiding the big bang singularity through a big bounce mechanism in the high energy region. In loop quantum cosmology an inflationary universe is emergent after the big bounce, no matter…
We consider an inflationary universe scenario with multiple stages of inflation. The primary inflation, which may start at the Planck epoch, is followed by secondary inflations, which include the cosmological inflation that causes the…
Despite its central role in modern cosmology, doubts are often expressed as to whether cosmological inflation is really a falsifiable theory. We distinguish two facets of inflation, one as a theory of initial conditions for the hot big bang…
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…
The question of first-cause has troubled philosophers and cosmologists alike. Now that it is apparent that our universe began in a Big Bang explosion, the question of what happened before the Big Bang arises. Inflation seems like a very…
We consider the proposition that multiple universes exist by reviewing the various manifestations. In recent years, this idea has been elevated from science fiction and introduced in separate guises as an explanation for coincidence…
Recent developments in cosmology suggest that much of the universe is in a state of explosive, accelerated expansion, called inflation. We live in a "bubble" where inflation has ended, and other bubbles with diverse properties are…
The basic workings of inflationary models are summarized, along with the arguments that strongly suggest that our universe is the product of inflation. The mechanisms that lead to eternal inflation in both new and chaotic models are…
The creation of universes in entangled pairs may avoid the initial singularity and it would have observable consequences in a large macroscopic universe like ours, at least in principle. In this paper we describe the creation of an…
When Inflation is embedded in a fundamental theory, such as string theory, it typically begins when the Universe is already substantially larger than the fundamental scale [such as the one defined by the string length scale]. This is…