Related papers: Cosmic Density Perturbations from Late-Decaying Sc…
We show that the cumulative CO emission from galaxies throughout cosmic history distorts the spectrum of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) at a level that is well above the detection limit of future instruments, such as the Primordial…
It has been recently proposed that the presence of a temporal electromagnetic field on cosmological scales could explain the phase of accelerated expansion that the universe is currently undergoing. The field contributes as a cosmological…
We investigate large-scale inhomogeneity of dark energy in the bubble nucleation scenario of the universe. In this scenario, the present universe was created by a bubble nucleation due to quantum tunneling from a metastable ancestor vacuum,…
We study the curvaton scenario in supersymmetric framework paying particular attention to the fact that scalar fields are inevitably complex in supersymmetric theories. If there are more than one scalar fields associated with the curvaton…
We discuss metric perturbations produced during a period of inflation in the early universe where two scalar fields evolve. The final scalar perturbation spectrum can be calculated in terms of the perturbed expansion along neighbouring…
The phases of the Fourier transform of any linear cosmological perturbation may be random (the Gaussian case) or not (the non-Gaussian case). If a non-Gaussian inhomogeneity was generated during the inflationary era by some process of very…
We present an alternative scenario for cosmic structure formation where initial fluctuations are due to Kalb-Ramond axions produced during a pre-big bang phase of inflation. We investigate whether this scenario, where the fluctuations are…
One of the major predictions of inflation is the existence of a stochastic background of cosmological gravitational waves (GW). These gravitational waves can induce significant temperature anisotropies in the Cosmic Microwave Background…
We propose a new mechanism to generate density perturbations in inflationary models. Spatial fluctuations in the decay rate of the inflaton field to ordinary matter lead to fluctuations in the reheating temperature. We argue that in most…
Non-linear evolution of cosmological energy density fluctuations triggers deviations from Gaussianity in the temperature distribution of the cosmic microwave background. A method to estimate these deviations is proposed. N-body simulations…
We generalize a recently proposed mechanism for the origin of primordial metric perturbations in inflationary models. Quantum fluctuations of light scalar fields during inflation give rise to super-horizon fluctuations of masses and…
These lecture notes cover mainly three connected topics. In the first part we give a detailed treatment of cosmological perturbation theory. The second part is devoted to cosmological inflation and the generation of primordial fluctuations.…
We study the possibility that large scale cosmological perturbations have been generated during the domination and decay of a massive particle species whose mass depends on the expectation value of a light scalar field. We discuss the…
We consider the effects of the curvaton, late-decaying scalar condensation, to observational constraints on inflation models. From current observations of cosmic density fluctuations, severe constraints on some class of inflation models are…
We propose a model of cosmological evolution of the early and late Universe which is consistent with observational data and naturally explains the origin of inflation and dark energy. We show that the de Sitter accelerated expansion of the…
The scale--independence of the primordial curvature perturbation suggests that it comes from the vacuum fluctuation during inflation of a light scalar field. This field may be the inflaton, or a different `curvaton' field. The observation…
Fluctuations in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature are being studied with ever increasing precision. Two competing types of theories might describe the origins of these fluctuations: ``inflation'' and ``defects''. Here we…
We analyse the primordial density perturbation when it is generated by a `curvaton' field different from the inflaton. In some cases this perturbation may have large isocurvature components, fully correlated or anti-correlated with the…
Primordial fluctuations in the cosmic density are usually assumed to take the form of a Gaussian random field that evolves under the action of gravitational instability. In the early stages, while they have low amplitude, the fluctuations…
Measurements of CMB anisotropy and, more recently, polarization have played a very important role allowing precise determination of various parameters of the `standard' cosmological model. The expectation of the paradigm of inflation and…