Related papers: Initial Conditions in Pre-Big Bang
Inflation provides a unified paradigm for understanding the isotropy of the cosmic microwave background (CMB), the flatness problem, and the origin of large-scale structure. Although the physics responsible for inflation is not yet well…
The hot Big-Bang standard model for the evolution of the universe, despite strong successes, lets unresolved a number of problems. One of its main drawbacks, known as the horizon problem, was until now thought to be only solvable by an…
Understanding the physics of inflaton condensate fragmentation in the early Universe is crucial as the existence of fragments in the form of non-topological solitons (oscillons or Q-balls) may potentially modify the evolution of the…
With the recent measurements of temperature and polarization anisotropies in the microwave background by WMAP, we have entered a new era of precision cosmology, with the cosmological parameters of a Standard Cosmological Model determined to…
Yes, if the universe has compact topology. Inflation is currently the most elegant explanation of why the universe is old, large, nearly flat, homogeneous on large scales and structured on small scales. One of the weaknesses of the…
I give a brief review of the status of research on the nature of initial conditions required to obtain a period of cosmological inflation. It is shown that there is good evidence that in the case of large field models, the inflationary…
Some recent studies based on numerical relativity simulations claim that slow contraction/ekpyrosis is strongly preferred over inflation as the smoothing mechanism that brought the universe into the homogeneous, isotropic and flat state we…
In these lectures I review the standard hot big-bang cosmology, emphasizing its successes, its shortcomings, and its major challenges-developing a detailed understanding of the formation of structure in the Universe and identifying the…
We investigate the early-time accelerated universe after the Big Bang. We pay attention to the dissipative properties of the inflationary universe in the presence of a soft type singularity, making use of the parameters of the generalized…
Several scenarios have been proposed in which primordial perturbations could originate from quantum vacuum fluctuations in a phase corresponding to a collapse phase (in an Einstein frame) preceding the Big Bang. I briefly review three…
Warm inflation is an interesting possibility of describing the early universe, whose basic feature is the absence, at least in principle, of a preheating or reheating phase. Here we analyze the dynamics of warm inflation generalizing the…
The purpose of these lectures is to give a pedagogical introduction to inflation and the production of primordial perturbations, as well as a review of some of the latest developments in this domain. After a short introduction, we review…
Primordial nucleosynthesis provides a probe of the Universe during its early evolution. Given the progress exploring the constituents, structure, and recent evolution of the Universe, it is timely to review the status of Big Bang…
The standard model of cosmology posits that some time in the remote past, labelled as t=0, a Big-Bang occurred. However, it does not tell what caused the Big-Bang and subsequently the Inflation. In the present work the cause of the Big-Bang…
This is a very comprehensible review of some key issues in Modern Cosmology. Simple mathematical examples and analogies are always used, whenever available. The starting point is the well know Big Bang Cosmology (BBC). We deal with the…
The large-scale power deficit in the cosmic microwave background fluctuations might be relevant with the physics of pre-inflation, a bounce, or a superinflationary phase preceding slow-roll inflation, which can provide a singular-free…
Analytic results are presented for preheating in both flat and open models of chaotic inflation, for the case of massless inflaton decay into further inflaton quanta. It is demonstrated that preheating in both these cases closely resembles…
We investigate the initial conditions of inflation in a Bianchi~I universe that is homogeneous but not isotropic. We use the Eisenhart lift to describe such a theory geometrically as geodesics on a field space manifold. We construct the…
We propose a new class of inflationary solutions to the standard cosmological problems (horizon, flatness, monopole,...), based on a modification of old inflation. These models do not require a potential which satisfies the normal…
An inhomogeneous version of pre--Big Bang cosmology emerges, within string theory, from quite generic initial conditions, provided they lie deeply inside the weak-coupling, low-curvature regime. Large-scale homogeneity, flatness, and…