Related papers: Solving the horizon problem with a Delayed Big-Ban…
The necessary and sufficient condition for the absence of particle horizons in a big bang Friedmann-Robertson-Walker universe is provided. It happens to be a "smooth big bang" initial condition: the proper time derivative of the expansion…
The standard big bang cosmological model and the history of the early universe according to the grand unified theories of strong, weak and electromagnetic interactions are summarized. The shortcomings of big bang are discussed together with…
The conventional background solution for the evolution of a single canonical inflaton field performs admirably in extreme scenarios such as the slow-roll phase (where the slow-roll parameter is much less than one) and the deep reheating era…
This is one chapter of the collection of problems in cosmology, in which we assemble the problems, with solutions, that concern one of the most distinctive features of general relativity and cosmology---the horizons. The first part gives an…
Cosmic inflation is arguably the most favoured paradigm of the very early Universe. It postulates an early phase of fast, nearly exponential, and accelerated expansion. Inflationary models are capable of explaining the overall flatness and…
An exact inhomogeneous solution of Einstein's field equations is shown to be able to inflate in a non-uniform way in the early universe and explain anomalies in the WMAP power spectrum data. It is also possible for the model to explain the…
Recently Hollands and Wald argued that inflation does not solve any of the major cosmological problems. We explain why we disagree with their arguments. They also proposed a new speculative mechanism of generation of density perturbations.…
An alternative model describing the dynamics of a flat Universe without cosmological constant and allowing a gradual change of c with time is proposed. New relationships of redshift vs. distance and cosmic background radiation temperature…
The presence and evolution of apparent horizons in a two-parameter family of spherically symmetric, time-dependent solutions of Brans-Dicke gravity are analyzed. These solutions were introduced to model space- and time-varying gravitational…
We show that standard puzzles of hot Big Bang cosmology that motivated the introduction of cosmological inflation, such as the smoothness and horizon problem, the flatness problem and the relic problem are also solved by holographic models…
Big Bang models of the Universe predict rapid domination by curvature, a paradox known as the flatness problem. Solutions to this problem usually leave the Universe exactly flat for every practical purpose. Explaining a nearly but not…
Why the cosmological constant $\Lambda$ observed today is so much smaller than the Planck scale or why the universe is accelerating at present? This is so-called the cosmological constant fine-tuning problem. In this paper, we find that…
The introduction of a delay in the Friedmann equation of cosmological evolution is shown to result in the very early universe undergoing the necessary accelerated expansion in the usual radiation (or matter) dominated phase. Occurring even…
Decaying vacuum cosmological models evolving smoothly between two extreme (very early and late time) de Sitter phases are capable to solve or at least to alleviate some cosmological puzzles, among them: (i) the singularity, (ii) horizon,…
We describe how cosmology has converged towards a beautiful model of the Universe: the Big Bang Universe. We praise this model, but show there is a dark side to it. This dark side is usually called ``the cosmological problems'': a set of…
Space-based missions studying the cosmic microwave background (CMB) have progressively refined the parameter space in conventional models of inflation shortly ($\sim 10^{-37}$ seconds) after the big bang. While most inflationary scenarios…
The big bounce singularity of a simple 5D cosmological model is studied. Contrary to the standard big bang space-time singularity, this big bounce singularity is found to be an event horizon at which the scale factor and the mass density of…
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…
The hot big-bang cosmology provides a reliable accounting of the Universe from about $10^{-2}\sec$ after the bang until the present, as well as a robust framework for speculating back to times as early as $10^{-43}\sec$. Cosmology faces a…
A refined version of a recently introduced method for analysing the dynamics of an inhomogeneous irrotational dust universe is presented. A fully non-perturbative numerical computation of the time dependence of volume in this framework…