Related papers: Imaginative Cosmology
In these lectures I focus on early universe models which can explain the currently observed structure on large scales. I begin with a survey of inflationary cosmology, the current paradigm for understanding the origin of the universe as we…
We explore the dynamics and evolution of the Universe at early and late times, focusing on both dark energy and extended gravity models and their astrophysical and cosmological consequences. Modified theories of gravity not only provide an…
Some of the phenomenological implications of string cosmological models are reviewed, with particular attention to the spectra of the tensor, scalar and vector modes of the geometry. A class of self-dual string cosmological models is…
We consider new cosmological solutions with a collapsing, an intermediate and an expanding phase. The boundary between the expanding (collapsing) phase and the intermediate phase is seen by comoving observers as a cosmological past (future)…
Observational cosmology is in its "golden age" with a vast amount of recent data on the distribution of matter and light in the universe. This data can be used to probe theories of the very early universe. It is small amplitude cosmological…
A broad class of two-dimensional loop-corrected dilaton gravity models exhibit cosmological solutions that interpolate between the string perturbative vacuum and a background with asymptotically flat metric and linearly growing dilaton. The…
The discovery that the cosmic expansion is accelerating has been followed by an intense theoretical and experimental response in physics and astronomy. The discovery implies that our most basic notions about how gravity work are violated on…
A general overview of the history and present status of inflationary cosmology is given. Recent developments discussed in this paper include the hybrid inflation scenario, the theory of reheating, and the theory of inflating tolopogical…
Inflationary cosmology has provided a predictive and phenomenologically very successful scenario for early universe cosmology. Attempts to implement inflation using scalar fields, however, lead to models with serious conceptual problems. I…
Last couple of decades have been the golden age for cosmology. High quality data confirmed the broad paradigm of standard cosmology but have thrusted upon us a preposterous composition for the universe which defies any simple explanation,…
In a recent paper (Vigoureux et al. Int. J. Theor. Phys. 47:928, 2007) it has been suggested that the velocity of light and the expansion of the universe are two aspects of one single concept connecting space and time in the expanding…
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 resolution of the problem of cosmological singularity in the framework of gauge theories of gravitation is discussed. Generalized cosmological Friedmann equations for homogeneous isotropic models filled by interacting scalar fields and…
We consider a non-singular origin for the Universe starting from an Einstein static Universe, the so called "emergent universe" scenario, in the framework of a theory which uses two volume elements $\sqrt{-{g}}d^{4}x$ and $\Phi d^{4}x$,…
The "new standard cosmology", based on the theory of inflation, has very impressive observational support. I review some outstanding problems of the new cosmology and the global view of the universe -- the multiverse -- that it suggests. I…
The inflationary scenario has become the paradigm of early universe cosmology, and - in conjuction with ideas from superstring theory - has led to speculations about an "inflationary multiverse". From a point of view of phenomenology, the…
In this paper we provide both a diagnosis and resolution of the cosmological constant problem, one in which a large (as opposed to a small) cosmological constant $\Lambda$ can be made compatible with observation. We trace the origin of the…
Recently a scale invariant theory of gravity was constructed by imposing a conformal symmetry on general relativity. The imposition of this symmetry changed the configuration space from superspace - the space of all Riemannian 3-metrics…
We show that a class of nonlocal gravity models, proposed to explain current cosmic acceleration without dark energy, passes two major tests: First, they can be defined so as not to alter the, observationally correct, general relativity…
We present a rich class of exact solutions which contains radiation-dominated and matter-dominated models for the early and late universe. They include a variable cosmological ``constant'' which is derived from a higher dimension and…