Related papers: Inflation
A self-consistent modular cosmology scenario and its testability in view of future CMB experiments are discussed. Particular attention is drawn to the enhanced symmetric points in moduli space which play crucial roles in our scenario. The…
A short introduction to structure formation is given, followed by a discussion of the possible characteristics of the initial perturbations assuming a generic inflationary origin. Observational data related to large-scale structure and the…
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…
These lectures provide an introductory review of big bang cosmology. I discuss the expanding Friedmann-Robertson-Walker universe, summarizing the observational evidence which has led to its adoption as the `standard' cosmological model and…
Loop quantum cosmology provides an efficient framework to study the evolution of the Universe beyond the classical Big Bang paradigm. Because of holonomy corrections, the singularity is replaced by a "bounce". The dynamics of the background…
We present a brief review of Cosmological Inflation from the personal perspective of the author who almost 30 years ago proposed a way of resolving the problem of Cosmological Horizon by employing certain notions and developments from the…
Discovered almost forty years ago, inflation has become the leading paradigm for the early universe. Originally invented to avoid the fine-tuning puzzles of the standard model of cosmology, the so-called hot Big Bang phase, inflation has…
There is very strong circumstantial evidence that there was an inflationary epoch very early in the history of the universe. In this lecture I will describe how we might be able to piece together some understanding of the dynamics during…
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…
Extra-natural inflation is (de)constructed. Explicit models are compared with cosmological observations. The models successfully achieve trans-Planckian inflaton field excursions.
This article provides an introductory review of inflation and cosmological perturbation theory. I begin by motivating the need for an epoch of inflation during the early stages of the radiation dominated era, and describe how inflation is…
These four lectures cover four topics in modern cosmology: the cosmological constant, the cosmic microwave background, inflation, and cosmology as a probe of physics at the Planck scale. The underlying theme is that cosmology gives us a…
Two processes of matter creation after inflation: 1) gravitational creation of superheavy (quasi)stable particles, and 2) non-thermal phase transitions leading to formation of topological defects, may be relevant to the resolution of the…
Recent results from cosmic microwave background (CMB) experiments verify several of the predictions of inflation, while ruling out a number of alternative structure-formation scenarios. Given the successes of the theory, the obvious next…
On the one hand, inflation is an extremely convincing scenario: it solves most cosmological paradoxes and generates fluctuations that became the seeds for the growth of structures. It, however, suffers from a "naturalness" problem:…
We find a rather unique extension of inflationary scenario which avoids selfreproduction and thus resolves the problems of multiverse, predictability and initial conditions. In this theory the amplitude of the cosmological perturbations is…
The inflationary paradigm, although very successful phenomenologically, suffers from several conceptual problems which motivate the search for alternative scenarios of early universe cosmology. Here, two possible alternatives will be…
I motivate and discuss some recent work on theories with varying constants, and consider some possible observational consequences and tests. Particular emphasis is given to models which can (almost) exactly mimic the predictions of standard…
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…
The process of quantum creation of a qusihomogeneous inflationary universe near a cosmological singularity is considered. It is shown that during the evolution quantum fluctuations of spatial topologies increase and the universe acquires…