Related papers: Dynamical Inflation and Vacuum Selection
In generic models of cosmological inflation, quantum fluctuations strongly influence the spacetime metric and produce infinitely many regions where the end of inflation (reheating) is delayed until arbitrarily late times. The geometry of…
An introductory account is given of the inflationary cosmology, which postulates a period of accelerated expansion during the Universe's earliest stages. The historical motivation is briefly outlined, and the modelling of the inflationary…
We find a unique way of realizing inflation through cyclic phases in an universe with negative vacuum energy. According to the second law of thermodynamics entropy monotonically increases from cycle to cycle, typically by a constant factor.…
Cosmic inflation driven by the vacuum energy associated with the $D$-term of a supersymmetric abelian gauge group and a possible existence of long-range force mediated by an ultra-light gauge boson $Z^\prime$ are two extreme examples of…
Informed by a quantum information perspective, we interpret cosmological expansion of space as growing entanglement between underlying degrees of freedom. In particular, we focus on inflationary cosmology, which, while being a successful…
We study the possibility that inflation is driven by a scalar field together with a vector field minimally coupled to gravity. By assuming an effective potential that incorporates both fields into the action, we explore two distinct…
After decades of successful hot big-bang paradigm, Cosmology still lacks a framework in which the early inflationary phase of the universe smoothly matches the radiation epoch and evolves to the present `quasi' de Sitter spacetime. No less…
We investigate inflation within $f(R,\phi)$-theories, where a dynamical scalar field is coupled to gravity. A class of models which can support early-time acceleration with the emerging of an effective cosmological constant at high…
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 review experimental and theoretical developments in inflation and its application to structure formation, including the curvaton idea. We then discuss a particle physics model of supersymmetric hybrid inflation at the intermediate scale…
In most current models of inflation based on a weakly self-coupled scalar matter field minimally coupled to gravity, the period of inflation lasts so long that, at the beginning of the inflationary period, the physical wavelengths of…
Does inflation provide a compelling explanation for why the universe is so large, so flat, and so old, and a predictive theory of density perturbations? In this brief contribution (based on the role of the author as moderator of the…
In the very early Universe matter can be described as a conformal invariant ultra-relativistic perfect fluid, which does not contribute, on classical level, to the evolution of the isotropic and homogeneous metric. However, in this…
Inflation in the early Universe is one of the most promising probes of gravity in the high-energy regime. However, observable scales give access to a limited window in the inflationary dynamics. In this essay, we argue that quantum…
It is conjectured that inflation, taking account of quantum gravity, leads to a discrete spectrum of cosmological perturbations, instead of the continuous Gaussian spectrum predicted by standard field theory in an unquantized background.…
Inflationary homogeneous isotropic cosmological models filled by scalar fields and ultrarelativistic matter are examined in the framework of gauge theories of gravitation. By using quadratic scalar field potential numerical analysis of…
We give a detailed presentation of a recently proposed mechanism of generating the energy scale of inflation by loop effects in quantum cosmology. We discuss the quantum origin of the early inflationary Universe from the no-boundary and…
We present an introduction to cosmic inflation in the framework of Palatini gravity, which provides an intriguing alternative to the conventional metric formulation of gravity. In the latter, only the metric specifies the spacetime…
Inflationary cosmology has become one of the cornerstones of modern cosmology. Inflation was the first theory within which it was possible to make predictions about the structure of the Universe on large scales, based on causal physics. The…
It was recently proposed that five-dimensional inflation can relate the causal size of the observable universe to the present weakness of gravitational interactions by blowing up an extra compact dimension from the microscopic fundamental…