Related papers: Introduction to Inflationary Cosmology
Cosmology is nowadays going through a true revolution in the quantity and quality of observations that are capable of providing crucial information about the origin and evolution of the universe. In the first years of the next millenium we…
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…
The very basics of cosmological inflation are discussed. We derive the equations of motion for the inflaton field, introduce the slow-roll parameters, and present the computation of the inflationary perturbations and their connection to the…
The theory of cosmological perturbations has become a cornerstone of modern quantitative cosmology since it is the framework which provides the link between the models of the very early Universe such as the inflationary Universe scenario…
I review the motivation for the early-time cosmic acceleration stage in expanding universe and discuss simple inflationary scenarios. Preheating and reheating are considered in great detail. This is a sample chapter from my book "Physical…
According to the most popular scenario, the early Universe should have experienced an accelerated expansion phase, called Cosmological Inflation, after which the standard Big Bang Cosmology would have taken place giving rise to the…
With the recent measurements of temperature and polarization anisotropies in the microwave background by WMAP, we have entered a new era of precision cosmology, with the cosmological parameters of a Standard Cosmological Model determined to…
A brief introduction to the gauge invariant classical and quantum theory of cosmological perturbations is given. The formalism is applied to inflationary Universe models and yields a consistent and unified description of the generation and…
After introducing gauge-invariant cosmological perturbation theory we give an improved set of governing equations for multiple fluids including energy transfer. Having defined adiabatic and entropic perturbations we derive the…
For two decades the hot big-bang model as been referred to as the standard cosmology -- and for good reason. For just as long cosmologists have known that there are fundamental questions that are not answered by the standard cosmology and…
A variant of hybrid inflation which is applicable in a wide class of supersymmetric grand unified models and reproduces the observed temperature perturbations of cosmic background radiation with natural values of the parameters is…
The inflationary scenario, which states that the early universe underwent a brief but dramatic period of accelerated spatial expansion, has become the current paradigm of early universe cosmology. Although inflationary cosmology has its…
We consider the description of cosmological dynamics from the onset of inflation by a perfect fluid whose parameters must be consistent with the strength of the enhanced quantum loop effects that can arise during inflation. The source of…
Cosmic inflation is envisioned as the ``most likely'' start for the observed universe. To give substance to this claim, a framework is needed in which inflation can compete with other scenarios and the relative likelihood of all scenarios…
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.…
The first aim of this lecture is to highlight two areas of recent progress in inflationary cosmology, namely reheating and the quantum theory of cosmological perturbations. The second aim is to discuss important conceptual problems for the…
This thesis is dedicated to analysing the generation and destruction of quantum correlations in the context of inflationary cosmology and an experiment of 'analogue' preheating. Inflation is a phase of accelerated expansion of the Universe,…
A unified description of inflation, dark energy, and dark matter is presented within a two-scalar-field cosmological model. Inflation, assumed to be of the warm type, is driven by one of the scalar fields, which, shortly after the end of…
Inflationary models are generally credited with explaining the large scale homogeneity, isotropy, and flatness of our universe as well as accounting for the origin of structure (i.e., the deviations from exact homogeneity) in our universe.…
We analyse numerically the onset of pre-big bang inflation in an inhomogeneous, spherically symmetric Universe. Adding a small dilatonic perturbation to a trivial (Milne) background, we find that suitable regions of space undergo…