Related papers: Inflationary cosmology of the extreme cosmic strin…
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…
A macroscopic universe may emerge naturally from a Planck cell fluctuation by unfolding through a stage of exponential expansion towards a homogeneous cosmological background. Such primordial inflation requires a large and presumably…
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…
We study cosmological solutions for the very early universe beginning at the Planck scale for a universe containing radiation, curvature and, as a simplification of a possible scalar field potential, a cosmological constant term. The…
The theory of cosmological perturbations is the main tool which connects theories of the early universe (based on new fundamental physics such as string theory) with cosmological observations. In these lectures, I will provide an…
Inflation of cosmic gauge and global strings is investigated by numerically solving the combined Einstein and field equations. Above some critical symmetry-breaking scales, the strings undergo inflation along the radial direction as well as…
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…
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…
We give a consistent description of how the inflationary Universe emerges in quantum cosmology. This involves two steps: Firstly, it is shown that a sensible probability peak can be obtained from the cosmological wave function. This is…
This thesis is dedicated to the study of inflationary scenarios based on string theory. Inflation is a brief period of accelerated expansion in the very early Universe which gives natural explanations for problems of the Standard Big Bang…
Brane inflation is a specific realization of the inflationary universe scenario in the early universe within the brane world framework in string theory. The naturalness and robustness of this realistic scenario is explained. Its predictions…
We consider curved space quantum corrections to the equations of motion of the inflaton field in the early Universe. Using the stochastic formalism in phase space, we demonstrate that the quantum corrected evolution of the inflaton can…
A Planck scale inflationary era -- in a quantum gravity theory predicting discreteness of quantum geometry at the fundamental scale -- produces the scale invariant spectrum of inhomogeneities with very small tensor-to-scalar ratio of…
This paper deals with the geometry of supermassive cosmic strings. We have used an approach that enforces the spacetime of cosmic strings to also satisfy the conservation laws of a cylindric gravitational topological defect, that is a…
Enforcing the spacetime of supermassive cosmic strings to satisfy the symmetry of a gravitational topological defect, that is a spacetime kink, it is shown that the energy of these strings becomes quantized so that only defects whose…
We describe a scenario for inflation in the framework of non-critical string theory, which does not employ an inflaton field. There is an exponential expansion of the volume of the Universe, induced by enormous entropy production in the…
We propose, within a perturbative string theory example, a cosmological way to generate a large hierarchy between the observed Planck mass and the fundamental string scale. Time evolution results in three large space dimensions, one…
Due to the quasi-exponential red-shifting which occurs during an inflationary period in the very early Universe, wavelengths which at the present time correspond to cosmological lengths are in general sub-Planckian during the early stages…
We consider a novel model of cosmic inflation. In our model one does not need any specific matter field to drive inflation, but inflation stems from the microscopic, Planck scale structure of spacetime, thus being of quantum gravitational…
We consider whether current notions about superstring theory below the Planck scale are compatible with cosmology. We find that the anticipated form for the dilaton interaction creates a serious roadblock for inflation and makes it unlikely…