Related papers: Making a Universe
All objects in 4D spacetime may in principle travel on null paths in a 5D mani-fold. We use this, together with a change in the extra coordinate and the signature of the metric, to construct a simple model of a classical universe and a…
Probing the geometry of the universe is one of the most important endevours in cosmology. Current observational data from the Cosmic Microwave Background anisotropy (CMB), galaxy surveys and type Ia supernovae (SNe Ia) strongly constrain…
We introduce "anamorphic" cosmology, an approach for explaining the smoothness and flatness of the universe on large scales and the generation of a nearly scale-invariant spectrum of adiabatic density perturbations. The defining feature is…
Is the universe finite or infinite, and what shape does it have? These fundamental questions, of which relatively little is known, are typically studied within the context of the standard model of cosmology where the universe is assumed to…
Cosmology is built on a relativistic understanding of gravity, where the geometry of the Universe is dynamically determined by matter and energy. In the cosmological concordance model, gravity is described by General Relativity, and it is…
It seems generic to have vacua with lower dimensionality than ours. We consider the possibility that the observable universe originated in a transition from one of these vacua. Such a universe has anisotropic spatial curvature. This may be…
It is shown that rotational cosmological perturbations can be generated in the early Universe, similarly to gravitational waves. The generating mechanism is quantum-mechanical in its nature, and the created perturbations should now be…
We question the global universe isotropy by probing the alignment of local structures in the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation. The original method proposed relies on a steerable wavelet decomposition of the CMB signal on the…
We consider a non singular origin for the Universe starting from an Einstein static Universe in the framework of a theory which uses two volume elements $\sqrt{-{g}}d^{4}x$ and $\Phi d^{4}x$, where $\Phi $ is a metric independent density,…
Two-dimensional random surfaces are studied numerically by the dynamical triangulation method. In order to generate various kinds of random surfaces, two higher derivative terms are added to the action. The phases of surfaces in the…
We calculate the probability of creation of a universe with space topology $S^{1}\times T_{g}$, where $S^{1}$ is the circle and $T_{g}$ is a compact hyperbolic surface of genus $g\geq 2$. We use the method of path integrals as applied to…
The topology of the universe is discussed in relation to the singularity problem. We explore the possibility that the initial state of the universe might have had a structure with 3-Klein bottle topology, which would lead to a model of a…
Causal Dynamical Triangulations in four dimensions provide a background-independent definition of the sum over space-time geometries in nonperturbative quantum gravity. We show that the macroscopic four-dimensional world which emerges in…
Focus of these lectures is the challenge of explaining the origin of structure in the Universe. The interplay between quantum field theory and classical general relativity has given rise to several interesting cosmological models which…
We present the geodesics on homogeneous and isotropic negatively curved spaces in a simple form suitable for application to cosmological problems. We discuss how the patterns in the microwave sky of anisotropic homogeneous universes can be…
The Universe is a physical object. Physical objects have shapes and sizes. General relativity is insufficient to describe the global shape and size of the Universe: the Hilbert-Einstein equations only treat limiting quantities towards an…
The Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) anisotropy constrains the geometry of the Universe because the positions of the acoustic peaks of the angular power spectrum depend strongly on the curvature of underlying three-dimensional space. In…
The behaviour of the wave function of the Universe under the barrier for anisotropic cosmological Bianchi type IX model with account of influence of the scalar field is explored. In view of known difficulties with interpretation of…
We define a universe as the contents of a spacetime box with comoving walls, large enough to contain essentially all phenomena that can be conceivably measured. The initial time is taken as the epoch when the lowest CMB modes undergo…
The dynamical generation of a four-dimensional classical universe from nothing but fundamental quantum excitations at the Planck scale is a long-standing challenge to theoretical physicists. A candidate theory of quantum gravity which…