相关论文: A post-WMAP perspective on inflation

Inflation in a five-dimensional brane world model with two boundary branes is studied. We make use of the moduli space approximation whereby the low energy theory reduces to a four-dimensional biscalar-tensor gravity plus a minimally…

Noncommutative inflation is based upon the consideration of some effects of the space-time uncertainty principle motivated by ideas from string/M theory. The CMB anisotropies may carry a signature of this very early Universe correction from…

Anisotropies in the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) contain a wealth of information about the past history of the universe and the present values of cosmological parameters. I ouline some of the theoretical advances of the last few years.…

There have been persistent suggestions, based on several diverse data sets, that the cosmic expansion is not exactly isotropic. It is not easy to develop a coherent theoretical account of such a ``Hubble anisotropy'', for, in standard…

In this article we review the theory of cosmological inflation with a particular focus on the beautiful connection it provides between the physics of the very small and observations of the very large. We explain how quantum mechanical…

The Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) has mapped the full sky in five frequency bands between 23 and 94 GHz. The primary goal of the mission is to produce high-fidelity, all-sky, polarization-sensitive maps that can be used to…

One of the major predictions of inflation is the existence of a stochastic background of cosmological gravitational waves (GW). These gravitational waves can induce significant temperature anisotropies in the Cosmic Microwave Background…

A scenario with two subsequent periods of inflationary expansion in the very early universe is examined. The model is based on a potential motivated by symmetries being found in field theory at high energy. For various parameter sets of the…

We present the status of our study into the feasibility of estimating the parameters of inflation from planned satellite observations of the anisotropy of the cosmic microwave background (CMB).We describe a perturbative procedure for…

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…

Forthcoming cosmic microwave background experiments (CMB) will provide precise new tests of structure-formation theories. The geometry of the Universe may be determined robustly, and the classical cosmological parameters, such as the…

We construct a class of single small field models of inflation that can predict, contrary to popular wisdom, an observable gravitational wave signal in the cosmic microwave background anisotropies. The spectral index, its running, the…

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…

With the advent of new missions to probe spectral distortions of the cosmic microwave background with unprecedented precision, the study of theoretical predictions of these signals becomes a promising avenue to test our description of the…

Cosmologists have developed a phenomenally successful picture of structure in the universe based on the idea that the universe expanded exponentially in its earliest moments. There are three pieces of evidence for this exponential expansion…

As the data on CMB anisotropies improve and potential cosmological applications are realized, it will be increasingly important for theoretical calculations to be as accurate as possible. All modern calculations for inflationary-inspired…

We explore a broad class of three-parameter inflationary models, called the $\Lambda$-inflation, and its observational predictions: high abundance of cosmic gravitational waves consistent with the Harrison-Zel'dovich spectrum of primordial…

I present a pedagogical review of inflation and the cosmic microwave background. I describe how a short period of accelerated expansion can replace the special initial conditions of the standard big bang model. I also describe the…

Despite its central role in modern cosmology, doubts are often expressed as to whether cosmological inflation is really a falsifiable theory. We distinguish two facets of inflation, one as a theory of initial conditions for the hot big bang…

We investigate the possibility that the amplitude of scalar density perturbations may be damped after inflation. This would imply that CMB anisotropies do not uniquely fix the amplitude of the perturbations generated during inflation and…