Related papers: Beyond Inflation: A Cyclic Universe Scenario
We find that general relativity can be naturally free of cosmological singularities. Several nonsingular models are currently available that either assume ad hoc matter contents, or are nonsingular only over a sector of solution space of…
The standard model of cosmology is based on the hot Big Bang theory and the inflationary paradigm. Recent precise observations of the temperature and polarization anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background and the matter distribution…
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…
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…
A model of a universe without big bang singularity is presented, which displaysanearly inflationary period ending just before a phase transition to a deflationary epoch. The model produces enough heavy particles so as to reheat the universe…
In order to draw out the essential behavior of the universe, investigations of early universe cosmology often reduce the complex system to a simple integrable system. Inflationary models are of this kind as they focus on simple scalar field…
Yes, if the universe has compact topology. Inflation is currently the most elegant explanation of why the universe is old, large, nearly flat, homogeneous on large scales and structured on small scales. One of the weaknesses of the…
Nonlinear electrodynamics with two dimensional parameters is studied. The range of electromagnetic fields when principles of causality, unitarity and the classical stability hold, are obtained. A singularity of the electric field at the…
A continuous process of creation of particles is investigated as a possible connection between the inflationary stage with late cosmic acceleration. In this model, the inflationary era occurs due to a continuous and fast process of creation…
Eternal inflation produces pocket universes with all physically allowed vacua and histories. Some of these pocket universes might contain a phase of slow-roll inflation, some might undergo cycles of cosmological evolution and some might…
In most current models of inflation based on a weakly self-coupled scalar matter field minimally coupled to gravity, the period of inflation lasts so long that, at the beginning of the inflationary period, the physical wavelengths of…
Observations indicate that the universe is effectively flat, but they do not rule out a closed universe. The role of positive curvature is negligible at late times, but can be crucial in the early universe. In particular, positive curvature…
Since the advent of inflation, several theorems have been proven suggesting that although inflation can (and generically does) continue eternally into the future, it cannot be extended eternally into the past to create a ``steady-state''…
The theory of the inflationary multiverse changes the way we think about our place in the world. According to its most popular version, our world may consist of infinitely many exponentially large parts, exhibiting different sets of…
It has recently been realized that many theories of physics beyond the Standard Model give rise to cosmological histories exhibiting extended epochs of cosmological stasis. During such epochs, the abundances of different energy components…
Inflationary models are generally credited with explaining the large scale homogeneity, isotropy, and flatness of our universe as well as accounting for the origin of structure (i.e., the deviations from exact homogeneity) in our universe.…
The inflationary paradigm, although very successful phenomenologically, suffers from several conceptual problems which motivate the search for alternative scenarios of early universe cosmology. Here, two possible alternatives will be…
It has been known for some time that the usual inference drawn from the observed near-flatness of the large-scale Universe - namely the existence of a cosmological "flatness problem", which is then taken as a partial, but key motivation for…
This is a very comprehensible review of some key issues in Modern Cosmology. Simple mathematical examples and analogies are always used, whenever available. The starting point is the well know Big Bang Cosmology (BBC). We deal with the…
Non-singular bouncing cosmologies are well--motivated models for the early universe. Recent observational data are consistent with positive spatial curvature and allow for a natural collapsing and bouncing phase in the very early universe.…