Related papers: Conformal Invariance, Accelerating Universe and Th…
The cosmological model best capable of fitting current observational data features two separate epochs during which the Universe is accelerating. During the earliest stages of the Universe, such acceleration is known as cosmological…
Inflation and quintessence can both be described by a single scalar field. The cosmic time evolution of this cosmon field realizes a crossover from the region of an ultraviolet fixed point in the infinite past to an infrared fixed point in…
Physical equivalence between different conformal frames in scalar-tensor theory of gravity is a known fact. However, assuming that matter minimally couples to the metric of a particular frame, which we call the matter Jordan frame, 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…
For variable gravity models the strength of gravity, as measured by Newton's ``constant'' or the Planck mass, depends on the value of a scalar field, the cosmon. We discuss two simple four-parameter models with a quadratic or constant…
We present a cosmological model arising from a gravitational theory with an infinite tower of higher-order curvature invariants that can reproduce the entire evolution of the Universe: from inflation to late-time acceleration, without…
Perhaps the deepest mystery of our accelerating Universe in expansion is the existence of a tiny and rigid cosmological constant, $\Lambda$. Its size is many orders of magnitude below the expected one in the standard model of particle…
This article discusses density perturbations in inflationary models, offering a pedagogical description of how these perturbations are generated by quantum fluctuations in the early universe. A key feature of inflation is that that rapid…
A gauge-invariant, linear cosmological perturbation theory of an almost homogeneous and isotropic universe with dynamically evolving Newton constant G and cosmological constant $\Lambda$ is presented. The equations governing the evolution…
We probe the cosmological consequences of a recently proposed class of solutions to the cosmological constant problem. In these models, the universe undergoes a long period of inflation followed by a contraction and a bounce that sets the…
Quantum gravitational effects in loop quantum cosmology lead to a resolution of the initial singularity and have the potential to solve the horizon problem and generate a quasi scale-invariant spectrum of density fluctuations. We consider…
The idea that the vacuum energy density $\rho_{\Lambda}$ could be time dependent is a most reasonable one in the expanding Universe; in fact, much more reasonable than just a rigid cosmological constant for the entire cosmic history. Being…
Conformal embedding of closed-universe models in a de Sitter background suggests a quantisation condition on the available conformal time. This condition implies that the universe is closed at no greater than the 10% level. When a massive…
A quantum field theory warm inflation model is presented that solves the horizon/flatness problems. The model obtains, from the elementary dynamics of particle physics, cosmological scale factor trajectories that begin in a radiation…
We investigate the inflationary universe in a theory where two scalar fields non-minimally coupling to the scalar curvature and an extra $R^2$ term exist and the conformal invariance is broken. In particular, the slow-roll inflation is…
We heal the cosmological constant problem by means of a \emph{cancellation mechanism} that adopts a phase transition during which quantum fluctuations are eliminated. To this purpose, we propose that a generalized scalar (dark) matter field…
In this work we investigate the behavior of three-dimensional (3D) cosmological models. The simulation of inflationary and dark-energy-dominated eras are among the possible results in these 3D formulations; taking as starting point the…
Methods and concepts for the study of phase transitions mediated by a time-dependent order-parameter field in curved spacetimes are discussed. A practical example is the derivation of an effective (quasi-)potential for the description of…
An anthropic understanding of the cosmological constant requires that the vacuum energy at late time scans from one patch of the universe to another. If the vacuum energy during inflation also scans, the various patches of the universe…
We investigate a cosmological model in which the Stueckelberg fields are non-minimally coupled to the scalar curvature in a gauge invariant manner. We present not only a solution that can be considered in the context of the late time…