Related papers: Towards a Singularity-Free Inflationary Universe?
We study the inflationary era of the Universe in a modified cosmological scenario based on the gravity-thermodynamics conjecture with Barrow entropy instead of the usual Bekenstein-Hawking one. The former arises from the effort to account…
The pre--big bang cosmological scenario is studied within the context of the Brans--Dicke theory of gravity. An epoch of superinflationary expansion may occur in the pre--big bang phase of the Universe's history in a certain region of…
We present a minimal model for the Universe evolution fully extracted from effective String Theory. This model is by its construction close to the standard cosmological evolution, and it is driven selfconsistently by the evolution of the…
We propose a stringy version of the old inflation scenario which does not require any slow-roll inflaton potential and is based on a specific example of string compatification with warped metric. Our set-up admits the presence of…
We study a gravitational model with curvature-squared $R^2$ and curvature-quartic $R^4$ nonlinearities. The effective scalar degree of freedom $\phi$ (scalaron) has a multi-valued potential $U(\phi)$ consisting of a number of branches.…
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 empty space (with no matter fields) is not really empty because of natural metric fluctuations, quantum and classical. We show that gravitons as well as classical gravitational waves of super-horizon wavelengths are able to form the de…
From a model-building perspective, the inflationary sector might very well have no direct couplings to other species, apart from inevitable gravitational interactions. Within the context of General Relativity, a thermal universe can still…
A first order inflation model where a gauge coupling constant runs as the universe inflates is investigated. This model can solve the graceful-exit problem within Einstein gravity by varying the bubble formation rate. The sufficient…
We discuss how Starobinsky-like inflation may emerge from dilaton dynamics in brane cosmology scenarios based on string theory, in which our universe is represented as a three-brane. The effective potential may acquire a constant term from…
We study an inflationary scenario with a vector impurity. We show that the universe undergoes anisotropic inflationary expansion due to a preferred direction determined by the vector. Using the slow-roll approximation, we find a formula to…
We present a cosmological model arising from a gravitational theory with an infinite tower of higher-order curvature invariants that can reproduce the entire evolution of the Universe: from inflation to late-time acceleration, without…
In the framework of scalar-tensor theories of gravity, we construct a new kind of cosmological model that conflates inflation and ekpyrosis. During a phase of conflation, the universe undergoes accelerated expansion, but with crucial…
We propose a novel scenario in which scalar perturbations, that seed the large scale structure of the Universe, are generated without relying on a scalar field (the inflaton). In this framework, inflation is driven by a de Sitter space-time…
The theory of inflation is one of the fundamental and revolutionary developments of modern cosmology that became able to explain many issues of early universe in the context of the standard cosmological model (SCM). However, the initial…
We discuss the existence of de Sitter inflationary solutions for the string-inspired fourth-derivative gravity theories with dilaton field. We consider a space-time of arbitrary dimension D and an arbitrary parametrization of the target…
We review recent trends on inflationary dynamics in the context of viable modified gravity theories. After providing a general overview of the inflationary paradigm emphasizing on what problems of hot Big Bang theory inflation solves, and a…
In this paper we investigate the asymptotic dynamics of inflationary cosmological models that are based in scalar-tensor theories of gravity. Our main aim is to explore the global structure of the phase space in the framework of…
Since the advent of inflation, several theorems have been proven suggesting that although inflation can (and generically does) continue eternally into the future, it cannot be extended eternally into the past to create a ``steady-state''…
The energy and time scales during the inflationary stage of the universe calls for an out of equilibrium quantum field treatment. Moreover, the high energy densities involved make necessary the use of non-perturbative approaches as large N…