Related papers: Initial Conditions in Pre-Big Bang
How sensitive are the predictions of inflation to pre-inflationary conditions when the number of efolds of inflation is not too large? In an attempt to address this question, we consider a simple model where the inflationary era is preceded…
The evolution of the universe started from a hot and dense Big Bang point. Temperature fluctuation map of cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation and initial seeds of large scale structures (LSS) are explained by an inflationary period…
Slow-roll inflation generically makes several predictions: a flat Universe, primordial adiabatic density perturbations, and a stochastic gravity-wave background. Each inflation model will further predict specific relations between the…
The effect of the initial conditions in inflation on scalar and tensor perturbations is investigated. Formulae for the power spectra of gravitational waves and curvature perturbations for any initial conditions in inflation are derived, and…
A short inflationary phase may not erase all traces of the primordial universe. Associated observables include both spatial curvature and "anomalies" in the microwave background or large scale structure. The present curvature $\Omega_{K,0}$…
We consider the presence and evolution of primordial density perturbations in a cosmological model based on a simple ansatz which captures -- by providing a set of effective gravitational field equations -- the strength of the enhanced…
The transition from the end of inflation to a hot, thermal Universe, commonly referred to as (re)heating, is a critical yet often misunderstood phase in early Universe cosmology. This short review aims to provide a comprehensive,…
Quantum gravity may remove classical space-time singularities and thus reveal what a universe at and before the big bang could be like. In loop quantum cosmology, an exactly solvable model is available which allows one to address precise…
The main aim of this paper is to provide a qualitative introduction to the cosmic inflation and its relationship with current cosmological observations. The inflationary model solves many of the fundamental problems that challenge the…
The inflationary paradigm enjoys a very wide acceptance in the cosmological community, due in large part to the fact that it is said to "naturally account" for a nearly scale independent power primordial spectrum of fluctuations which is in…
After introducing gauge-invariant cosmological perturbation theory we give an improved set of governing equations for multiple fluids including energy transfer. Having defined adiabatic and entropic perturbations we derive the…
Two extensions of ideas lying in the basis of the inflationary scenario of the early Universe and their effect on the large scale structure of the present-day Universe are discussed. The first of them is the possibility of fast phase…
This work is focused on the study of early time cosmology and in particular on the study of inflation. After an introduction on the standard Big Bang theory, we discuss the physics of CMB and we explain how its observations can be used to…
The physical history of the Universe is completed by including the quantum planckian and trans-planckian phase before Inflation in the Standard Model of the Universe in agreement with observations. A new quantum precursor phase appears…
In this paper, we study the pre-inflationary dynamics for the power-law potential $(V(\phi) \propto \phi^n)$ with $n<2$ in the framework of loop quantum cosmology. In the case where the kinetic energy of the inflaton dominates at the…
The characteristics of the cosmic microwave background provide circumstantial evidence that the hot radiation-dominated epoch in the early universe was preceded by a period of inflationary expansion. Here, we show how a measurement of the…
We investigate if the observed small and nearly scale-invariant primordial cosmic perturbation, i.e. the perturbation amplitude $P_\zeta\sim10^{-9}$ and the spectral index $n_s \simeq 0.965$, is typical in the landscape of vacua after…
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…
The mechanism for triggering the universe inflation could be that at very early periods the time variable was discrete instead of smooth. Alternatively, and perhaps equivalently, it could be the consequence that the metrics of the early…
The hypothesis that the Universe underwent a period of exponential expansion at very early times has become the most popular theory of the early Universe. Not only does it solve some of the problems of standard big bang cosmology, but it…