Related papers: Inflation from Extra Dimensions
We investigate the initiation of cosmic inflation, in full numerical relativity, from pre-inflationary scenarios with large tensor and vector fluctuations in the metric. These settings are characterized by having large values in the Weyl…
The big bang model and the history of the early universe according to the grand unified theories are introduced. The shortcomings of big bang are discussed together with their resolution by inflationary cosmology. Inflation, the subsequent…
We argue that the presence of an inflationary epoch is a natural, almost unavoidable, consequence of the existence of a sensible effective action involving an infinite tower of higher-curvature corrections to the Einstein-Hilbert action. No…
We find a unique way of realizing inflation through cyclic phases in an universe with negative vacuum energy. According to the second law of thermodynamics entropy monotonically increases from cycle to cycle, typically by a constant factor.…
The standard cosmological model ($\Lambda CDM$) assumes that everything started in a singular Big Bang out of Cosmic Inflation, a mysterious form of modern Aether (the inflaton). Here we look for direct observational evidence for such…
Within the framework of a five-dimensional brane world with a stabilized radion, we compute the cosmological perturbations generated during inflation and show that the perturbations are a powerful tool to probe the physics of extra…
In most current models of inflation based on a weakly self-coupled scalar matter field minimally coupled to gravity, the period of inflation lasts so long that, at the beginning of the inflationary period, the physical wavelengths of…
In this paper we consider inflation as a probe of new physics near the string or Planck scale. We discuss how new physics can be captured by the choice of vacuum, and how this leads to modifications of the primordial spectrum as well as the…
We study an inflationary scenario with a vector impurity. We show that the universe undergoes anisotropic inflationary expansion due to a preferred direction determined by the vector. Using the slow-roll approximation, we find a formula to…
The inflaton potential in four-dimensional theory is rather arbitrary, and fine-tuning is required generically. By contrast, inflation in the brane world scenario has the interesting feature that the inflaton potential is motivated from…
There exists a growing body of observational evidence supporting a non-vanishing cosmological constant at the present epoch. We examine the possibility that such a term may arise directly from the potential energy which drove an…
We explore the possibility that the expansion of the universe can be driven by a condensate of spinors which are free of interactions on a 5D relativistic vacuum defined on an extended de Sitter spacetime which is Riemann-flat. The extra…
We examine the hypothesis that inflation is primarily driven by vacuum energy at a scale indicated by gauge coupling unification. Concretely, we consider a class of hybrid inflation models wherein the vacuum energy associated with a grand…
It is shown that the scalar degree of freedom built-in in the quadratic Weyl-invariant Einstein-Cartan gravity can drive inflation and with predictions in excellent agreement with observations.
Inflationary cosmology is developed in the second Randall-Sundrum braneworld scenario, where the accelerated expansion arises through potentials that are too steep to drive inflation in conventional cosmology. A relationship between the…
For variable gravity models the strength of gravity, as measured by Newton's ``constant'' or the Planck mass, depends on the value of a scalar field, the cosmon. We discuss two simple four-parameter models with a quadratic or constant…
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…
Within General Relativity, a minimally coupled scalar field governed by a quadratic potential is able to produce an accelerated expansion of the universe provided its value and excursion are larger than the Planck scale. This is an…
At its very beginning, the universe is believed to have grown exponentially in size via the mechanism of inflation. The almost scale-invariant density perturbation spectrum predicted by inflation is strongly supported by cosmological…
On compactification from higher dimensions, a single free massive scalar field gives rise to a set of effective four-dimensional scalar fields, each with a different mass. These can cooperate to drive a period of inflation known as assisted…