相关论文: On the origin of inflation

The separate-universe approach gives an intuitive way to understand the evolution of cosmological perturbations in the long-wavelength limit. It uses solutions of the spatially-homogeneous equations of motion to model the evolution of the…

We summarize our work on a consistency condition for inflation in two-field cosmological models, in the regime of rapid turn and third-order slow roll. To ensure a sustained inflationary period of this type, one needs to satisfy a certain…

Inflation has been the leading early universe scenario for two decades, and has become an accepted element of the successful `cosmic concordance' model. However, there are many puzzling features of the resulting theory. It requires both…

We propose and study a semi-classical cosmological system akin to the Newton-Schr\"odinger equation where matter field evolution is determined by time dependent Schr\"odinger equation. The resulting dynamics is one where the scale factor…

Usual inflation is realized with a slow rolling scalar field minimally coupled to gravity. In contrast, we consider dynamics of a scalar with a flat effective potential, conformally coupled to gravity. Surprisingly, it contains an attractor…

This paper discusses the problem of inflation in the context of Friedmann-Robertson-Walker Cosmology. We show how, after a simple change of variables, one can quantize the problem in a way which parallels the classical discussion. The…

Over the past three years we have determined the basic features of our Universe. It is spatially flat; accelerating; comprised of 1/3 a new form of matter, 2/3 a new form of energy, with some ordinary matter and a dash of massive neutrinos;…

The approximate homogeneity of spatial sections of the Universe is well supported observationally, but the inhomogeneity of the spatial sections is even better supported. Here, we consider the implications of inhomogeneity in dust models…

This thesis is dedicated to studying cosmological inflation, which is a period of accelerated expansion in the very early Universe that is required to explain the observed anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background. Inflation, when…

We study a scale-invariant model of quadratic gravity with a non-minimally coupled scalar field. We focus on cosmological solutions and find that scale invariance is spontaneously broken and a mass scale naturally emerges. Before the…

A model of cosmological inflation is proposed in which field space is a hyperbolic plane. The inflaton never slow-rolls, and instead orbits the bottom of the potential, buoyed by a centrifugal force. Though initial velocities redshift away…

We discuss two important modifications of inflationary paradigm. Until very recently we believed that inflation automatically leads to flatness of the universe, Omega = 1. We also thought that post-inflationary phase transitions in GUTs may…

We study the onset of inflation in 3+1 dimensional cosmologies with an inflationary potential $U$ satisfying $0 < \Lambda_1 \leq U \leq \Lambda_2$, matter satisfying the dominant and strong energy conditions, and with spatial slices that…

The warm inflation scenario is an alternative mechanism which can explain the isotropic and homogeneous Universe which we are living in. In this work I extend a previously introduced formalism, without the restriction of slow - roll regime.…

If our universe underwent inflation, its entropy during the inflationary phase was substantially lower than it is today. Because a low-entropy state is less likely to be chosen randomly than a high-entropy one, inflation is unlikely to…

We study the dynamics of topological defects in the context of ``topological inflation" proposed by Vilenkin and Linde independently. Analysing the time evolution of planar domain walls and of global monopoles, we find that the defects…

Inflation is the currently accepted paradigm for the beginnings of the Universe. To explain the observed almost scale invariant spectrum of density perturbations with only a slight spectral tilt, inflation must have been "slow roll", that…

We prove that a homogeneous and isotropic universe containing a scalar field with a power-law potential, $V(\phi )=A\phi ^{n}$, with $0<n<1$ and $A>0$ always develops a finite-time singularity at which the Hubble rate and its first…

One of the greatest problems of primordial inflation is that the inflationary space-time is past-incomplete. This is mainly because Einstein's GR suffers from a space-like Big Bang singularity. It has recently been shown that ghost-free,…

Recently Hollands and Wald argued that inflation does not solve any of the major cosmological problems. We explain why we disagree with their arguments. They also proposed a new speculative mechanism of generation of density perturbations.…