Related papers: Inflationary Theory and Alternative Cosmology
Inflation is considered as the best theory of the early universe by a very large fraction of cosmologists. However, the validity of a scientific model is not decided by counting the number of its supporters and, therefore, this dominance…
Inflationary cosmology attempts to provide a natural explanation for the flatness and homogeneity of the observable universe. In the context of reversible (unitary) evolution, this goal is difficult to satisfy, as Liouville's theorem…
Warm inflation has normalized two ideas in cosmology, that in the early universe the initial primordial density perturbations generally could be of classical rather than quantum origin and that during inflation, particle production from…
We consider cosmological scenarios in which density perturbations are generated by the quantum fluctuations of the inflaton field at early times; the late time dynamics involves a modulus which first dominates the energy density of the…
Cosmological inflation and topological defects have been considered for a long time, either in disagreement or in competition. On the one hand an inflationary era is required to solve the shortcomings of the hot big bang model, while on the…
The accelerated expansion of space during the period of cosmological inflation leads to trans-Planckian issues which need to be addressed. Most importantly, the physical wavelength of fluctuations which are studied at the present time by…
Modifying the standard hot big bang model of cosmology with an inflationary event has been very successful in resolving most of the outstanding cosmological problems. The various inflationary mechanisms proposed depend on the production of…
The standard big bang cosmological model and the history of the early universe according to the grand unified theories of strong, weak and electromagnetic interactions are summarized. The shortcomings of big bang are discussed together with…
Among the three cosmological enigma solved by the theory of inflation, {\it viz.} (a) large scale flatness, (b) absence of monopoles and strings, and (c) structure formation, the first two are addressed from the viewpoint of the observed…
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…
These lecture notes intend to form a short pedagogical introduction to inflationary cosmology, highlighting selected areas of recent progress such as reheating and the theory of cosmological perturbations. Problems of principle for…
We show that in generic supergravity theories the mass of the moduli during inflation is larger (or at least of the same order of magnitude) than the Hubble constant. This fact does not depends on the details of the inflation and on the…
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…
One of the major pillars of modern cosmology theory is a period of accelerating expansion in the early universe. This accelerating expansion, or inflation, must be sustained for at least 30 e--foldings. One mechanism used to drive the…
Modern physics has unlocked a number of mysteries regarding the early Universe, such as the baryogenesis, the unification of the strong and electroweak forces and the nucleosynthesis. However, understanding the very early Universe, close to…
Spontaneous symmetry breaking in grand unified theories is thought to have produced an exceedingly large number of magnetic monopoles in the early Universe. In the absence of suppression or annihilation, these very massive particles should…
We present a novel background-independent framework for cosmic inflation, starting with a matrix model. In this framework, inflation is portrayed as a dynamic process responsible for the generation of both space and time. This stands in…
The early Universe inflation is well known as a promising theory to explain the origin of large scale structure of the Universe, a causal theory for the origin of primordial density fluctuations which may explain the observed density…
Classic inflation, the theory described in textbooks, is based on the idea that, beginning from typical initial conditions and assuming a simple inflaton potential with a minimum of fine-tuning, inflation can create exponentially large…
Space-based missions studying the cosmic microwave background (CMB) have progressively refined the parameter space in conventional models of inflation shortly ($\sim 10^{-37}$ seconds) after the big bang. While most inflationary scenarios…