International Journal of Modern Physics D

In this paper, I will give a brief overview of the physics in the early universe, in particular, the inflation scenario. The predictions and the latest constraints on the inflation models will be discussed in detail.

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 slow-roll trajectory is a local attractor in initial condition space, whereas it is not in the case of small field models.

We provide a concise review on multi-field inflation and cosmological perturbations. We discuss convenient and physically meaningful bases in terms of which perturbations can be systematically studied. We give formal accounts on the gauge fixing conditions and present the perturbation action in two gauges. We also briefly review nonlinear perturbations.

Inflation models are numerous. It is extremely difficult, if possible at all, to identify the actual underlying inflation model of our primordial universe. Thus, for the purpose of proving/falsifying inflation and using inflation to probe new physics, model-independent approaches are crucial. Massive fields play a uniquely important role in those missions. This short review is based on a talk by one of the authors (YW) in the 2nd LeCosPA Symposium.

In this paper, we review some topics on generations of scale-invariant primordial scalar and tensor perturbations in the early universe models different from inflation. The content includes generation of scale-invariant and Gaussian scalar perturbation in the ekpyrotic/cyclic universe, and production scale-invariant tensor perturbation in contracting universe. The main property of the models reviewed in this paper is the nonminimal couplings, include nonminimal couplings between the scalar fields and those to the gravity. By introducing these couplings, it is not difficult to achieve scale-invariances for the perturbations in the early universe models alternative to inflation.

The observed value of the Higgs mass indicates an instability of the Higgs scalar at large energy scales, and hence also at large field values. In the context of early universe cosmology, this is often considered to lead to problems. Here, we point out that we can use the instability of the Higgs field to generate an ekpyrotic phase of contraction. In the context of string theory, it is possible that at very high energy densities, extra states become massless leading to an $S$-brane which causes the transition between a contracting phase in the past and the current expanding phase. Thus, the Higgs field may be useable to generate a nonsingular bouncing cosmology in which the anisotropy problem of usual bouncing scenarios is mitigated.