Related papers: Particle Physics and Inflationary Cosmology
The established cosmological theory which describes the history of the Universe since shortly after the "Big Bang" until today is remarkably successful. Thanks to the increasing precision of available observational data, we are now able to…
The shortcomings of the Standard Big Bang Cosmological Model as well as their resolution in the context of inflationary cosmology are discussed. The inflationary scenario and the subsequent oscillation and decay of the inflaton field are…
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…
We perform a general analysis of the cosmological viability of Geometric Inflation. We show that the evolution of the universe, from inflation to the present day, can be seen from the addition of an infinite tower of curvature invariants…
In the first part of this paper, we outline the construction of an inflationary cosmology in the framework where inflation is described by a universally evolving scalar field, with the Lagrangian ${\cal L}_\phi=-{1/2}(\partial\phi)^2…
Choosing the three phenomenological models of the dynamical cosmological term $\Lambda$, viz., $\Lambda \sim (\dot a/a)^2$, $\Lambda \sim {\ddot a/a}$ and $\Lambda \sim \rho$ where $a$ is the cosmic scale factor, it has been shown by the…
We propose a method to extract predictions from quantum cosmology for inflation that can be confronted with observations. Employing the tunneling boundary condition in quantum geometrodynamics, we derive a probability distribution for the…
Cosmological inflation, if it occurred, radically alters the picture of the `big bang', which would merely point to reheating at the end of inflation. Moreover, this reheating may be only local, so that inflation continues elsewhere and…
Last couple of decades have been the golden age for cosmology. High quality data confirmed the broad paradigm of standard cosmology but have thrusted upon us a preposterous composition for the universe which defies any simple explanation,…
These lecture notes have been written for a short introductory course on the status of inflation after Planck and BICEP2, given at the Xth Modave School of Mathematical Physics. The first objective is to give an overview of the theory of…
The probability of there being sufficient inflation to solve the fine-tuning associated with the horizon and flatness problems has recently been shown to be exponentially small, within the context of classical general relativity. Here this…
This lecture course covers cosmology from the particle physicist perspective. Therefore, the emphasis will be on the evidence for the new physics in cosmological and astrophysical data together with minimal theoretical frameworks needed to…
In these notes we present a selection of topics, each section approximately amounting to one lecture. We begin with a brief recapitulation of General Relativity, and the Standard Model of Cosmology. This is followed by lectures on important…
In a series of five lectures I review inflationary cosmology. I begin with a description of the initial conditions problems of the Friedmann-Robertson-Walker (FRW) cosmology and then explain how inflation, an early period of accelerated…
We show that next generation Cosmic Microwave Background experiments will be capable of the first ever measurement of the inflaton coupling to other particles, opening a new window to probe the connection between cosmic inflation and…
The physical basis of the modern cosmological inflationary models with baryosynthesis and nonbaryonic dark matter and energy implies such predictions of particle theory, that, in turn, apply to cosmology for their test. It makes physics of…
In a recent paper, Parker and Zhang [1] consider cosmological perturbations that can be possibly produced in the early Universe. This is an interesting problem having important observational implications. The paper of Parker and Zhang is…
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 basic workings of inflationary models are summarized, along with the arguments that strongly suggest that our universe is the product of inflation. I describe the quantum origin of density perturbations, giving a heuristic derivation of…
The early cosmic inflation, when taken along with the recent observations that the universe is currently dominated by a low density vacuum energy, leads to at least two potential problems which modern cosmology must address. First, there is…