Related papers: Predictions from Quantum Cosmology
We discuss two important modifications of inflationary paradigm. Until very recently we believed that inflation automatically leads to flatness of the universe, Omega = 1. We also thought that post-inflationary phase transitions in GUTs may…
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…
I conjecture that a flat 10D compact universe emerged out of nothing (By ``nothing'' I mean no notion of space and time) with all it's symmetries intact: Poincare invariance, conformal invariance and supersymmetry, it's massless moduli…
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…
We develop a quantum-cosmological framework in which the inflationary potential emerges from the structure of the wave function of the universe rather than being postulated. Starting from the Wheeler-DeWitt equation for a flat…
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…
We examine the particle production during tunneling in quantum cosmology. We consider a minisuperspace model with a massive, conformally coupled scalar field and a uniform radiation background. In this model, we construct a semiclassical…
A multidimensional cosmological model with space-time consisting of n (n>1) Einstein spaces M_i is investigated in the presence of a cosmological constant Lambda and m homogeneous minimally coupled scalar fields as a matter source. Classes…
Cosmology is undergoing an explosive period of activity, fueled both by new, accurate astrophysical data and by innovative theoretical developments. Cosmological parameters such as the total density of the Universe and the rate of…
According to the inflationary theory of cosmology, most elementary particles in the current universe were created during a period of reheating after inflation. In this work we self-consistently couple the Einstein-inflaton equations to a…
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…
Over the past three years we have determined the basic features of the Universe -- spatially flat; accelerating; comprised of 1/3 a new form of matter, 2/3 a new form of energy, with some ordinary matter and a dash of massive neutrinos; and…
Measurements of CMB anisotropy and, more recently, polarization have played a very important role allowing precise determination of various parameters of the `standard' cosmological model. The expectation of the paradigm of inflation and…
I show that the de Sitter Equilibrium cosmology generically predicts observable levels of curvature in the Universe today. The predicted value of the curvature depends only on the ratio of the density of non-relativistic matter to energy…
We give an introduction to the cosmological multiverse, aimed at an audience of artists. We discuss general relativity -- our modern theory of gravity -- and the cosmological constant, which is widely believed to be responsible for the…
In this work, we outline a new general relativistic cosmology. In this cosmology, the universe originates in the infinite past from sparsely distributed neutral matter and ends in the infinite future as a hot, relativistic plasma. The…
We consider the possibility of a past and future eternal universe, constructing geodesically complete inflating, loitering, and bouncing spacetimes. We identify the constraints energy conditions in General Relativity place on the building…
It has been known for some time that the usual inference drawn from the observed near-flatness of the large-scale Universe - namely the existence of a cosmological "flatness problem", which is then taken as a partial, but key motivation for…
The expansion of our universe, when followed backward in time, implies that it emerged from a phase of huge density, the big bang. These stages are so extreme that classical general relativity combined with matter theories is not able to…
Recent developments in cosmology indicate that every history having a nonzero probability is realized in infinitely many distinct regions of spacetime. Thus, it appears that the universe contains infinitely many civilizations exactly like…