Related papers: Singularity structure in Veneziano's model
Quintessential inflation provides a unified description of the early and late accelerated phases of the Universe, linking the inflationary epoch to the present-day dark energy-dominated era through a single scalar degree of freedom. In this…
We present a model where early inflation and late accelerating expansion of the Universe are driven by the real and imaginary parts of a single complex scalar field, which we identified as inflaton and phantom field, respectively. This…
Hybrid inflation within supersymmetric grand unified theories, as well as inflation through brane collisions within braneworld cosmological models, lead to the formation of one-dimensional defects. Observational data, mainly from the cosmic…
Exact solutions for a model with variable $G$, $\Lambda$ and bulk viscosity are obtained. Inflationary solutions with constant (de Sitter-type) and variable energy density are found. An expanding anisotropic universe is found to isotropize…
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…
The cosmological constant $\Lambda$ used to be a freedom in Einstein's theory of general relativity, where one had a proclivity to set it to zero purely for convenience. The signs of $\Lambda$ or $\Lambda$ being zero would describe…
The gravitino problem is revisited in the framework of cosmological models in which the primordial cosmic matter is described by a relativistic imperfect fluid. Dissipative effects (or bulk viscosity effects) arise owing to the different…
The quest to understand better the nature of the initial cosmological singularity is with us since the discovery of the expanding universe. Here, we propose several non-flat models, among them the standard cosmological scenario with a…
We consider several new classes of viable vector field alternatives to the inflaton and quintessence scalar fields. Spatial vector fields are shown to be compatible with the cosmological anisotropy bounds if only slightly displaced from the…
The study of dynamic singularity formation in spacetime, focusing on scalar field collapse models, is analysed. We revisit key findings regarding open spatial topologies, concentrating on minimal conditions necessary for singularity and…
Using numerical solutions of the full Einstein field equations coupled to a scalar inflaton field in 3+1 dimensions, we study the conditions under which a universe that is initially expanding, highly inhomogeneous and dominated by gradient…
In the present thesis, using an effective field theory point of view, we explore theories of single-field inflation where higher derivative operators become relevant, affecting in a novel way the dynamics and therefore the observations. For…
We suggest a structure for the vacuum comprised of a network of tightly knotted/linked flux tubes formed in a QCD-like cosmological phase transition and show that such a network can drive cosmological inflation. As the network can be…
We propose a picture, within the pre-big-bang approach, in which the universe emerges from a bath of plane gravitational and dilatonic waves. The waves interact gravitationally breaking the exact plane symmetry and lead generically to…
The inflationary scenario, which states that the early universe underwent a brief but dramatic period of accelerated spatial expansion, has become the current paradigm of early universe cosmology. Although inflationary cosmology has its…
In cosmology it has become usual to introduce new entities as dark matter and dark energy in order to explain otherwise unexplained observational facts. Here, we propose a different approach treating spacetime as a continuum endowed with…
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…
Recently it has been suggested that non-gaussian inflationary perturbations can be usefully analysed in terms of a putative dual gauge theory defined on the future conformal infinity generated by an accelerating cosmology. The problem is…
We show that in theories of gravity that add quadratic curvature invariants to the Einstein-Hilbert action there exist expanding vacuum cosmologies with positive cosmological constant which do not approach the de Sitter universe. Exact…
We propose a class of scalar models that, once coupled to gravity, lead to cosmologies that smoothly and stably connect an inflationary quasi-de Sitter universe to a low, or even zero-curvature, maximally symmetric spacetime in the…