Related papers: Holography, Diffeomorphisms, and Scaling Violation…
The decoherence of quantum fluctuations into classical perturbations during inflation is discussed. A simple quantum mechanical argument, using a spatial particle wavefunction rather than a field description, shows that observable…
In the standard inflationary paradigm the inhomogeneities observed in the CMB arise from quantum fluctuations of an initially homogeneous and isotropic vacuum state. This picture suffers from two well-known weaknesses. First, it assumes…
Recent Planck data show the anomalies of CMB fluctuations on large angular scales, which confirms the early observations by WMAP. We continue studying an inflationary model, in which before the slow roll inflation the universe is in a…
During inflation, spacetime is approximately described by de Sitter space which is conformally invariant with the symmetry group SO(1,4). This symmetry can significantly constrain the quantum perturbations which arise in the inflationary…
The standard model of cosmology with nearly Gaussian, isotropic, scale invariant and adiabatic initial conditions describes the cosmological observations well. However, the study of any deviation from the mentioned conditions will open up a…
We show that deviations of the quantum state of the inflaton from the thermal vacuum of inflation may leave an imprint in the CMB anisotropies. The quantum dynamics of the inflaton in such a state produces corrections to the inflationary…
We study the gauge invariance of physical observables in holographic theories under the local diffeomorphism. We find that gauge invariance is intimately related to the holographic renormalisation: the local counter terms defined in the…
We show that a perturbed inflationary spacetime, driven by a canonical single scalar field, is invariant under a special class of coordinate transformations together with a field reparametrization of the curvature perturbation in co-moving…
The recently detected polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) holds the potential for revealing the physics of inflation and gravitationally mapping the large-scale structure of the universe, if so called B-mode signals below…
Measurements of CMB temperature fluctuations by the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) indicate that the fluctuation amplitude in one half of the sky differs from the amplitude in the other half. We show that such an asymmetry…
We investigate a framework aiming to provide a common origin for the large-angle anomalies detected in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB), which are hypothesized as the result of the statistical inhomogeneity developed by different…
We discuss ability of the harmonic pattern of peaks in the CMB angular power spectrum to test inflation. By studying robust features of alternate models, which must all be isocurvature in nature, we reveal signatures unique to inflation.…
Quantum fluctuations of a certain class of bulk operators defined in spatial sub-volumes of Minkowski space-time, have an unexpected area scaling property. We wish to present evidence that such area scaling may be ascribed to a boundary…
The space of inflationary models is vast, containing wide varieties of mechanisms, symmetries, and spectra of particles. Consequently, the space of observational signatures is similarly complex. Hence, it is natural to look for boundaries…
We use the relation between certain diffeomorphisms in the bulk and Weyl transformations on the boundary to build the conformal structure of the metric in the presence of matter in the bulk. We explicitly obtain the conformal anomaly in any…
Since inflationary perturbations must generically couple to all degrees of freedom present in the early Universe, it is more realistic to view these fluctuations as an open quantum system interacting with an environment. Then, on very…
We consider the hypothesis that nonlocal, omnidirectional, causally-coherent quantum entanglement of inflationary horizons may account for some well-known measured anomalies of Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) anisotropy on large angular…
We propose a "feature-scattering" mechanism to explain the cosmic microwave background cold spot seen from WMAP and Planck maps. If there are hidden features in the potential of multi-field inflation, the inflationary trajectory can be…
We propose that several of the anomalies that have been observed at large angular scales in the CMB have a common origin in a cosmic bounce that took place before the inflationary era. The bounce introduces a new physical scale in the…
We consider the evolution of the Affleck-Dine scalar during D-term and F-term inflation and solve the combined slow-roll equations of motion. We show that for a typical case, where both the Affleck-Dine scalar and inflaton initially have…