Related papers: Modular Cosmology
The evolution of slow--roll inflation in a five--dimensional brane world model with two boundary branes and bulk scalar field is studied. Assuming that the inflationary scale is below the brane tension, we can employ the moduli space…
The nature of dark matter and of dark energy which constitute more than $95\%$ of the energy in the Universe remains a great and unresolved question in cosmology. Cold dark matter can be made of an ultralight scalar field dominated by its…
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…
Generically, string models with $N=1$ supersymmetry are not expected to have moduli beyond perturbation theory; stringy non-perturbative effects as well as low energy field-theoretic phenomena such as gluino condensation will lift any flat…
In an alternative mechanism recently proposed, adiabatic cosmological perturbations are generated at the decay of the inflaton field due to small fluctuations of its coupling to matter. This happens whenever the coupling is governed by the…
We argue that strong dynamics at the Planck scale can solve the cosmological moduli problem. We discuss its implications for inflation models, and find that a certain type of multi-field inflation model is required for this mechanism to…
The potential during inflation must be very flat in, at least, the direction of the inflaton. In renormalizable global supersymmetry, flat directions are ubiquitous, but they are not preserved in a generic supergravity theory. It is known…
Inflation may have been driven by a component which violated the Null-Energy Condition, thereby leading to {\it super inflation}. We provide the formalism to study cosmological perturbations when such a component is described by a scalar…
We propose new classes of inflation models based on the modular symmetry, where the modulus field $\tau$ serves as the inflaton. We establish a connection between modular inflation and modular stabilization, wherein the modulus field rolls…
In the inflationary scenarios suggested by string theory, the vacuum fluctuations of the electromagnetic field can be amplified by the time-evolution of the dilaton background, and can grow large enough to explain both the origin of the…
We show that scalar field fluctuations alone can drive cosmic acceleration, provided the universe is spatially closed and the Compton wavelength of the field exceeds the radius of curvature. This mechanism may open new perspectives on…
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…
Small fluctuations around homogeneous and isotropic expanding backgrounds are the main object of study in cosmology. Their origin and evolution is sensitive to the physical processes that happen during inflation and in the late Universe. As…
In string theory, the traditional picture of a Universe that emerges from the inflation of a very small and highly curved space-time patch is a possibility, not a necessity: quite different initial conditions are possible, and not…
The theory of cosmological fluctuations assumes that the pre-inflationary state of the universe was the quantum vacuum of a scalar field(s) coupled to gravity. The observed cosmic microwave background fluctuations are then interpreted as…
We set constraints on moduli cosmology from the production of dark matter -- radiation and baryon -- radiation isocurvature fluctuations through modulus decay, assuming the modulus remains light during inflation. We find that the moduli…
These lecture notes intend to form a short pedagogical introduction to inflationary cosmology, highlighting selected areas of recent progress such as reheating and the theory of cosmological perturbations. Problems of principle for…
An epoch of accelerated expansion, or inflation, in the early universe solves several cosmological problems. While there are many models of inflation only recently has it become possible to discriminate between some of the models using…
We demonstrate that the combination of the ideas of unimodular gravity, scale invariance, and the existence of an exactly massless dilaton leads to the evolution of the universe supported by present observations: inflation in the past,…
The inflationary phase of the Universe is explored by proposing a toy model related to the scalar field, termed as {\it inflaton}. The potential part of the energy density in the said era is assumed to have a constant vacuum energy density…