Related papers: Causality and Cosmic Inflation
Observations of the cosmic microwave sky are revealing the primordial non-uniformities from which all structure in the Universe grew. The only known physical mechanism for generating the inhomogeneities we see involves the amplification of…
In the standard inflationary paradigm the inhomogeneities observed in the CMB arise from quantum fluctuations of an initially homogeneous and isotropic vacuum state. This picture suffers from two well-known weaknesses. First, it assumes…
If a coupling between the inflaton and the Gauss-Bonnet term is introduced, many models of inflation that were ruled out by the most recent Planck data can be made viable again. The predictions for the scalar spectral index and…
A classical evolution in chaotic inflationary models starts at high energy densities with semi-classical initial conditions presumably consistent with universal quantum nature of all the fundamental forces. That is each quantum contributes…
The inflationary scenario is not the only paradigm of early universe cosmology which is consistent with current observations. General criteria will be presented which any successful early universe model must satisfy. Various ways, including…
We show that it is possible to combine an early phase of String Gas Cosmology which can explain the origin of the observed structures on cosmological scales with a short later period of power law inflation which creates spatial flatness.…
We show that the entropy of cosmological perturbations originating as quantum vacuum fluctuations in the very early universe, including the contribution of the leading nonlinear interactions, can be viewed as momentum space entanglement…
We investigate a nonsingular initial state of the Universe which leads to inflation naturally. The model is described by a scalar field with a quadratic potential in Eddington-inspired Born-Infeld gravity. The curvature of this initial…
The notion of inflation (past or present) in standard cosmological models is shown to be a consequence of a sufficiently high second law entropy production from the internal heating of the universal expansion. The longitudinal viscous…
Models of cosmic inflation posit an early phase of accelerated expansion of the universe, driven by the dynamics of one or more scalar fields in curved spacetime. Though detailed assumptions about fields and couplings vary across models,…
We consider a more general initial condition satisfying the minimal uncertainty relationship. We calculate the power spectrum of a simple model in inflationary cosmology. The results depend on perturbations generated below a fundamental…
We show that in a generic case of the pre-big-bang scenario, inflation will solve cosmological problems only if the universe at the onset of inflation is extremely large and homogeneous from the very beginning. The size of a homogeneous…
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 early Universe inflation is well known as a promising theory to explain the origin of large scale structure of Universe and to solve the early universe pressing problems. For a resonable inflation model, the potential during inflation…
We propose yet another solution to the initial condition problem of inflation associated with homogeneity beyond the horizon at the onset of inflation, in cases where inflation is preceded by a radiation era. One may argue that causality…
Yes, if the universe has compact topology. Inflation is currently the most elegant explanation of why the universe is old, large, nearly flat, homogeneous on large scales and structured on small scales. One of the weaknesses of the…
At the level of heuristic effective dynamics, we investigate the cosmological inflation with holonomy corrections of loop quantum cosmology (LQC) in the $k=0$ Friedmann-Robertson-Walker model with a single inflaton field subject to a simple…
The early stages of the universe evolution are discussed according to the hot big bang model and the grand unified theories. The shortcomings of big bang are summarized and their resolution by inflationary cosmology is sketched.…
We consider the robustness of small-field inflation in the presence of scalar field inhomogeneities. Previous numerical work has shown that if the scalar potential is flat only over a narrow interval, such as in commonly considered…
We study initial conditions for inflation in scenarios where the inflaton potential has a plateau shape. Such models are those most favored by Planck data and can be obtained in a large number of model classes. As a representative example,…