Related papers: Predictions from Quantum Cosmology
The observed value of the cosmological constant poses large theoretical problems. We find that topology of the Universe provides a natural source for it. Restricting dynamically an Einstein-Cartan gravity to General Relativity in our…
Observational cosmology is in its "golden age" with a vast amount of recent data on the distribution of matter and light in the universe. This data can be used to probe theories of the very early universe. It is small amplitude cosmological…
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…
In this paper we consider the implications of the "landscape" paradigm for the large scale properties of the universe. The most direct implication of a rich landscape is that our local universe was born in a tunnelling event from a…
An introduction to modern cosmology is given, focusing on theories for the origin of structure in the Universe. After a brief review of the theory of growth of cosmological perturbations and a summary of some important observational…
Open Inflation has recently been suggested as a possible way out of the age crisis caused by observations of a large rate of expansion of the universe, in conflict with the existence of very old globular clusters. It proposes that our local…
On the one hand, inflation is an extremely convincing scenario: it solves most cosmological paradoxes and generates fluctuations that became the seeds for the growth of structures. It, however, suffers from a "naturalness" problem:…
A diverse set of observations now compellingly suggest that Universe possesses a nonzero cosmological constant. In the context of quantum-field theory a cosmological constant corresponds to the energy density of the vacuum, and the wanted…
An introductory account is given of the inflationary cosmology, which postulates a period of accelerated expansion during the Universe's earliest stages. The historical motivation is briefly outlined, and the modelling of the inflationary…
Cosmological perturbations generated during inflation exhibit striking quantum features, including entanglement and high circuit complexity. Yet their observational signatures remain effectively indistinguishable from classical stochastic…
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…
In cosmology based on general relativity, the universe is modeled as a fluid. The transition from the Einstein field equation to its large-scale (cosmological) version is thus analogous to the transition, for a system consisting of a large…
A new varying-$c$ cosmological model constructed using two additional assumptions, which was introduced in our previous work, is briefly reviewed and the dynamic equation of the model is derived distinctly from a semi-Newtonian approach.…
The quantum gravitational scale of inflation is calculated by finding a sharp probability peak in the distribution function of chaotic inflationary cosmologies driven by a scalar field with large negative constant $\xi$ of nonminimal…
We argue using simple models that all successful practical uses of probabilities originate in quantum fluctuations in the microscopic physical world around us, often propagated to macroscopic scales. Thus we claim there is no physically…
This paper contains a critique of the standard inflationary account of the origin of cosmological structures from quantum fluctuations in the early universe. This critique can be thought to be purely philosophical in nature, but I prefer to…
Inflationary cosmology leads to the picture of a "multiverse," involving an infinite number of (spatially infinite) post-inflationary thermalized regions, called pocket universes. In the context of theories with many vacua, such as the…
If the effective cosmological constant is non-zero, our observable universe may enter a stage of exponential expansion. In such case, regions of it may tunnel back to the false vacuum of an inflaton scalar field, and inflation with a high…
Cosmological inflation remains to be a unique mechanism of generation of plausible initial conditions in the early universe. In particular, it generates the primordial quasiclassical perturbations with power spectrum determined by the…
The universe we observe is homogeneous on super-horizon scales, leading to the ``cosmic homogeneity problem''. Inflation alleviates this problem but cannot solve it within the realm of conservative extrapolations of classical physics. A…