Related papers: Can Inflation be Falsified?

In this article we review the theory of cosmological inflation with a particular focus on the beautiful connection it provides between the physics of the very small and observations of the very large. We explain how quantum mechanical…

Cosmological inflation, if it occurred, radically alters the picture of the `big bang', which would merely point to reheating at the end of inflation. Moreover, this reheating may be only local, so that inflation continues elsewhere and…

I argue that the proposition that primordial perturbations were produced by inflation is most definitely falsifyable. Far from ``predicting anything you want'', the Gaussianity and passivity of inflationary perturbations strongly constrain…

How did it all begin? Although this question has undoubtedly lingered for as long as humans have walked the Earth, the answer still eludes us. Yet since my grandparents were born, scientists have been able to refine this question to a…

This note makes a self-contained exposition of the basic facts of big bang cosmology as they relate to inflation. The fundamental problems with that model are then explored. A quartic scalar potential model of inflation is evaluated which…

Inflation has been the leading early universe scenario for two decades, and has become an accepted element of the successful `cosmic concordance' model. However, there are many puzzling features of the resulting theory. It requires both…

Cosmological inflation and topological defects have been considered for a long time, either in disagreement or in competition. On the one hand an inflationary era is required to solve the shortcomings of the hot big bang model, while on the…

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…

Cosmic inflation provides a window to the highest energy densities accessible in nature, far beyond those achievable in any realistic terrestrial experiment. Theoretical insights into the inflationary era and its observational probes may…

Inflation is considered as the best theory of the early universe by a very large fraction of cosmologists. However, the validity of a scientific model is not decided by counting the number of its supporters and, therefore, this dominance…

Modern cosmology provides a connection between the physics of particles and fields and observational cosmology. Making use of this link, a wealth of new observational data can be utilized to explore and constrain theories of fundamental…

The current status of early universe cosmology can be summarized as precision, but inherently limited, data requiring explanation from precision and robust theory. Specifically inflation is presently the single concrete hope for solving the…

Inflationary cosmology has become one of the cornerstones of modern cosmology. Inflation was the first theory within which it was possible to make predictions about the structure of the Universe on large scales, based on causal physics. The…

This review article aims at presenting the theory of inflation. We first describe the background spacetime behavior during the slow-roll phase and analyze how inflation ends and the Universe reheats. Then, we present the theory of…

In the hope of avoiding model dependence of the cosmological observables, phenomenological parametrizations of Cosmic Inflation have recently been proposed. Typically, they are expressed in terms of two parameters associated with an…

Although the inflationary paradigm is the most widely accepted explanation for the current cosmological observations, it does not necessarily correspond to what actually happened in the early stages of our Universe. To decide on this issue,…

One way to judge the impact of the inflation concept is to consider where cosmology might be today without it. The Einstein-de Sitter model would not have been so keenly defended, and there might have been more interest in negative space…

The early Universe inflation is well known as a promising theory to explain the origin of large scale structure of the Universe, a causal theory for the origin of primordial density fluctuations which may explain the observed density…

We discuss the possibility that the inflationary paradigm, undoubtfully today's best framework to understand all the present cosmological data, may still have some viable challengers. The underlying idea for such discussions is that…

Informed by a quantum information perspective, we interpret cosmological expansion of space as growing entanglement between underlying degrees of freedom. In particular, we focus on inflationary cosmology, which, while being a successful…