Related papers: Why did the Universe Start from a Low Entropy Stat…
We show that the inclusion of backreaction of massive long wavelengths imposes dynamical constraints on the allowed phase space of initial conditions for inflation, which results in a superselection rule for the initial conditions. Only…
If our universe underwent inflation, its entropy during the inflationary phase was substantially lower than it is today. Because a low-entropy state is less likely to be chosen randomly than a high-entropy one, inflation is unlikely to…
The entropy of the observable universe is increasing. Thus, at earlier times the entropy was lower. However, the cosmic microwave background radiation reveals an apparently high entropy universe close to thermal and chemical equilibrium. A…
Model independent arguments following from the Covariant Entropy Principle imply that causal diamonds in the very early universe were entirely filled with a single equilibrated system with finite entropy. A universe where this condition…
Penrose [1] has emphasized how the initial big bang singularity requires a special low entropy state. We address how recent brane cosmological schemes address this problem and whether they offer any apparent resolution. Pushing the start…
We show why the universe started in an unstable de Sitter state. The quantum origin of our universe implies one must take a `top down' approach to the problem of initial conditions in cosmology, in which the histories that contribute to the…
There exists the "entropy problem" of the early universe, that is, why did the universe begin with an extremely low entropy and how did it evolve into such high entropy at late times? It has been long believed that inflation cannot be the…
This is a completely rewritten version of the talk I gave at the Philosophy of Cosmology conference in Tenerife, September 2014, which incorporates elements of my IFT Madrid Anthropics Conference talk. The original was too technical. The…
Inflationary models, especially those with plateau-type potentials, are consistent with the cosmological data, but inflation itself does not resolve the initial singularity. This singularity is resolved, for example, by the idea of the…
The universe is certainly not yet in total thermodynamical equilibrium,so clearly some law telling about special initial conditions is needed. A universe or a system imposed to behave periodically gets thereby required ``initial…
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…
We show that the entropy of cosmological perturbations originating as quantum vacuum fluctuations in the very early universe, including the contribution of the leading nonlinear interactions, can be viewed as momentum space entanglement…
Inflation has been the leading early universe scenario for two decades, and has become an accepted element of the successful `cosmic concordance' model. However, there are many puzzling features of the resulting theory. It requires both…
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.…
We contrast the possibility of inflation starting a) from the universe's inception or b) from an earlier non-inflationary state. Neither case is ideal since a) assumes quantum mechanical reasoning is straightforwardly applicable to the…
While cosmological inflation can erase primordial inhomogeneities, it is possible that inflation may not begin in a significantly inhomogeneous universe. This issue is particularly pressing in multifield scenarios, where even the…
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…
Closed, singularity-free, inflationary cosmological models have recently been studied in the context of general relativity. Despite their appeal, these so called emergent models suffer from a number of limitations. These include the fact…
In this paper we present an informal description of the Cyclic Inflation scenario which allows our universe to "start" with a negative potential energy, inflate, and then gracefully exit to a positive potential energy universe. We discuss…
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…