Related papers: Arrow of Time in String Theory
Inflationary spacetimes have been argued to be past geodesically incomplete in many situations. However, whether the geodesic incompleteness implies the existence of an initial spacetime curvature singularity or whether the spacetime may be…
The main purpose of this paper is to advance a unified theory of dark matter, dark energy, and inflation first formulated in 2008. Our minimal affine extension of the GR has geodesics coinciding with the pseudo Riemannian ones, up to…
The eternal inflation problem continues to be considered one of standard's cosmology most serious shortcomings. This arises when one considers the effects of "quantum fluctuations" (QF) on the zero mode of inflaton field during a Hubble…
Inflationary cosmology attempts to provide a natural explanation for the flatness and homogeneity of the observable universe. In the context of reversible (unitary) evolution, this goal is difficult to satisfy, as Liouville's theorem…
An inflationary scenario that leads to $\Omega _0<1$ today is presented. An epoch of `old' inflation during which the smoothness and horizon problems are solved is followed by a shortened epoch of `new' inflation. Old inflation exits…
We develop our recent suggestion that inflation may be made past eternal, so that there is no initial cosmological singularity or "beginning of time". Inflation with multiple vacua generically approaches a steady-state statistical…
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 study the origin of the universe (or pre-inflation) by suggesting that the primordial space-time in the universe suffered a global topological phase transition, from a 4D Euclidean manifold to an asymptotic 4D hyperbolic one. We…
A model quantum cosmology is used to illustrate how arrows of time emerge in a universe governed by a time-neutral dynamical theory constrained by time asymmetric initial and final boundary conditions represented by initial and final…
We consider new cosmological solutions with a collapsing, an intermediate and an expanding phase. The boundary between the expanding (collapsing) phase and the intermediate phase is seen by comoving observers as a cosmological past (future)…
Inflationary cosmology has, in the last few years,received a strong dose of support from observations. The fact that the fluctuation spectrum can be extracted from the inflationary scenario through an analysis that involves quantum field…
In spite of its great phenomenological success, current models of scalar field-driven inflation suffer from important unresolved conceptual issues. New fundamental physics will be required to address these questions. String theory is a…
Spacetime wormholes are evidently an essential component of the construction of a time machine. Within the context of general relativity, such objects require, for their formation, exotic matter -- matter that violates at least one of the…
A string cosmology scenario ("pre-big-bang") postulates that the evolution of the Universe starts from a state of very small curvature and coupling, undergoes a long phase of dilaton-driven kinetic inflation and at some later time joins…
In cosmology it has become usual to introduce new entities as dark matter and dark energy in order to explain otherwise unexplained observational facts. Here, we propose a different approach treating spacetime as a continuum endowed with…
The existence of initial singularities in expanding universes is proved without assuming the timelike convergence condition. The assumptions made in the proof are ones likely to hold both in open universes and in many closed ones. (It is…
String theory has transformed our understanding of geometry, topology and spacetime. Thus, for this special issue of Foundations of Physics commemorating "Forty Years of String Theory", it seems appropriate to step back and ask what we do…
Assuming that the early universe had (i) a description using perturbative string theory and its field theory limit (ii) an epoch of slow-roll inflation within a four-dimensional effective field theory and a hierarchy of scales $M_{inf} <…
In a systematic study, we use an equivalent pair of improved numerical relativity codes based on a tetrad-formulation of the classical Einstein-scalar field equations to examine whether slow contraction or inflation (or both) can resolve…
In this paper we discuss a spacetime having the topology of S^3 x R but with a different smoothness structure leading to a geometric model for inflation, called geometric inflation. In particular this spacetime is not globally hyperbolic…