Related papers: Amplification of Vacuum Fluctuations in String Cos…
The inhomogeneities associated with massless Kalb-Ramond axions can be amplified not only in isotropic (four-dimensional) string cosmological models but also in the fully anisotropic case. If the background geometry is isotropic, the axions…
Recent BICEP2 detection of low-multipole B-mode polarization anisotropy in the cosmic microwave background radiation supports the inflationary universe scenario and suggests a large inflaton field range. The latter feature can be achieved…
This is a short review of string cosmology. We wish to connect string-scale physics as closely as possible to observables accessible to current or near-future experiments. Our possible best hope to do so is a description of inflation in…
Using an analytical model for the string network we show that the kurtosis of cosmic microwave background (CMB) temperature gradient maps is a good statistic to distinguish between the cosmic string model and inflationary models of…
I demonstrate that instability in a system of homogeneous scalar fields leads to the growth of super-Hubble metric perturbations. This generalizes the result that parametric resonance can lead to the growth of cosmological perturbations.…
A rigorous constraint analysis on cosmic inflation entails several probes which collectively survey an extensive range of energy scales. We complement the cosmic microwave background data with an updated compilation of the cosmic abundance…
If the cosmological inflationary scenario took place in the cosmic landscape in string theory, the inflaton, the scalar mode responsible for inflation, would have meandered in a complicated multi-dimensional potential. We show that this…
Brane inflation is a specific realization of the inflationary universe scenario in the early universe within the brane world framework in string theory. The naturalness and robustness of this realistic scenario is explained. Its predictions…
An overview is presented of possible cosmologically distant sources of gravitational wave backgrounds, especially those which might produce detectable backgrounds in the LISA band between 0.1 and 100 mHz. Examples considered here include…
A class of well-motivated models of inflation end by producing cosmic strings. The current status of efforts to calculate and observe the signals from such models are outlined, with a particular emphasis on cosmic strings, and on the Cosmic…
Inflationary scenarios in string theory often involve a large number of light scalar fields, whose presence can enrich the post-inflationary evolution of primordial fluctuations generated during the inflationary epoch. We provide a simple…
The spectrum of the gravitational wave background originating from quantum fluctuations during inflation is calculated numerically for various inflation models over a wide range of frequencies. We take into account four ingredients : the…
Superstring theory, models with extra dimensions and other SUSY models generically predict that the coupling constants are in fact vacuum expectation values of fields like the dilaton, moduli etc. Assuming some of these fields are light…
We further clarify how scalar metric perturbations are amplified in an inflationary cosmology. We first construct a simple, analytic model of an inflationary cosmology in which the expansion scale factor evolves continuously from an…
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…
The interplay between string theory and early-universe cosmology offers promising avenues to explore high-energy regimes where the standard single-field slow-roll model may no longer provide an accurate description. One intriguing scenario…
The theory of cosmological perturbations is the main tool which connects theories of the early universe (based on new fundamental physics such as string theory) with cosmological observations. In these lectures, I will provide an…
We study the cosmology of axions in the post-inflationary scenario, where random initial conditions and the ensuing string-domain-wall network generate an isocurvature power spectrum. Axions radiated from strings behave as warm, wave-like…
The tracing of cosmological relics from the early string dynamics may enhance the theory and provide new perspectives on the major cosmological problems. This point is illustrated in a leading-order Bianchi-type $VII_0$ string background,…
Cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropy may result from both scalar and tensor perturbations. For a sufficiently narrow range of angular scales, CMB perturbations can be characterized by four parameters. Results from the Cosmic…