相关论文: Cosmology at the Crossroads

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…

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 review an inflationary scenario with the anisotropic expansion rate. An anisotropic inflationary universe can be realized by a vector field coupled with an inflaton, which can be regarded as a counter example to the cosmic no-hair…

We re-analyze the question of the use of cosmological observations to infer the present state and future evolution of our patch of the universe. In particular, we discuss under which conditions one might be able to infer that our patch will…

The "new standard cosmology", based on the theory of inflation, has very impressive observational support. I review some outstanding problems of the new cosmology and the global view of the universe -- the multiverse -- that it suggests. I…

Inflation as the leading paradigm depicting the very early universe physics could leave imprints on the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation. Using currently available CMB observations, we give the tightest constraints on inflation…

We propose an inflationary primordial feature model that can explain both the large and small-scale anomalies in the currently measured cosmic microwave background (CMB) anisotropy spectra, revealing a clip of adventurous history of the…

A short introduction to structure formation is given, followed by a discussion of the possible characteristics of the initial perturbations assuming a generic inflationary origin. Observational data related to large-scale structure and the…

CMB anisotropy data could put powerful constraints on theories of the evolution of our Universe. Using the observations of the large number of CMB experiments, many studies have put constraints on cosmological parameters assuming different…

We study a class of non-local, action-based, and purely gravitational models. These models seek to describe a cosmology in which inflation is driven by a large, bare cosmological constant that is screened by the self-gravitation between the…

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…

The formation of structure in the Universe offers some of the most powerful evidence in favour of the existence of dark matter in the Universe. We summarize recent work by ourselves and our collaborators, using linear and quasi-linear…

We study cosmological solutions for the very early universe beginning at the Planck scale for a universe containing radiation, curvature and, as a simplification of a possible scalar field potential, a cosmological constant term. The…

I discuss the interplay between inflation and microwave background anisotropies, stressing in particular the accuracy with which inflation predictions need to be made, and the importance of inflation as an underlying paradigm for…

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.…

These lecture notes cover mainly three connected topics. In the first part we give a detailed treatment of cosmological perturbation theory. The second part is devoted to cosmological inflation and the generation of primordial fluctuations.…

The inflationary scenario has become the paradigm of early universe cosmology, and - in conjuction with ideas from superstring theory - has led to speculations about an "inflationary multiverse". From a point of view of phenomenology, the…

This article provides an introductory review of inflation and cosmological perturbation theory. I begin by motivating the need for an epoch of inflation during the early stages of the radiation dominated era, and describe how inflation is…

In this thesis we will primarily demonstrate how additional scalar degrees of freedom - which are motivated from many high-energy embeddings - open up new observational windows onto the physics of inflation. We construct a Bayesian…

The status of quantum cosmologies as testable models of the early universe is assessed in the context of inflation. While traditional Wheeler-DeWitt quantization is unable to produce sizable effects in the cosmic microwave background, the…