Cosmic Perturbations Through the Cyclic Ages

Cyclic cosmology, in which the universe will experience alternating periods of gravitational collapse and expansion, provides an interesting understanding of the early universe and is described as "The Phoenix Universe". In usual expectation, the cyclic universe should be homogeneous, however, with studying the cosmological perturbations, we find that the amplification of curvature perturbations on the large scale may rip the homogeneous universe into a fissiparous multiverse...

One of the challenges of constructing a successful cyclic universe scenario is to be able to incorporate the second law of thermodynamics which typically leads to Tolman's problem of ever shrinking cycles. In this paper we construct a non-singular toy model where as the cycles shrink in the past they also spend more and more time in the entropy conserving Hagedorn phase. Thus in such a scenario the entropy asymptotes to a finite non-zero constant in the infinite past. The uni...

Cosmological perturbation theory fails in the new ekpyrotic and cyclic ekpyrotic scenarios, before the scale factor of the Universe reaches zero. As a result, a recently-proposed recipe for evolving the curvature perturbation through the bounce in these scenarios cannot be justified.

It has recently been argued that bubble nucleation in ekpyrotic and cyclic cosmological scenarios can lead to unacceptable inhomogeneities unless certain constraints are satisfied. In this paper we show that this is not the case. We find that bubble nucleation is completely negligible in realistic models.

We discuss how a cyclic model for the flat universe can be constructively derived from Loop Quantum Gravity. This model has a lower bounce, at small values of the scale factor, which shares many similarities with that of Loop Quantum Cosmology. We find that quantum gravity corrections can be also relevant at energy densities much smaller than the Planckian one and that they can induce an upper bounce at large values of the scale factor.

This text aims to give a pedagogical introduction into the main concepts of the theory of structure formation in the universe. The text is suited for graduate students of astronomy with a moderate background in general relativity. A special focus is laid on deriving the results formally from first principles. In the first chapter we introduce the homogeneous and isotropic universe defining the framework for the theory of structure formation, which is discussed in the three fo...

Ekpyrotic bouncing cosmologies have been proposed as alternatives to inflation. In these scenarios, the universe is smoothed and flattened during a period of slow contraction preceding the bounce while quantum fluctuations generate nearly scale-invariant super-horizon perturbations that seed structure in the post-bounce universe. An analysis by Tolley and Wesley (2007) showed that, for a wide range of ekpyrotic models, generating a scale-invariant spectrum of adiabatic or ent...

In this article we review recent developments of cyclic cosmology. A typical non-singular cyclic model within General Relativity requires a non-conventional fluid with negative effective energy density, in order to cancel the matter component and lead to a non-singular bounce. However, the existence of such a non-conventional fluid usually leads to quantum instabilities and makes the theory ill-defined. In the present work we follow the alternative way, obtaining two scenario...

We revisit the question of whether fluctuations in hydrodynamical, adiabatical matter could explain the observed structures in our Universe. We consider matter with variable equation of state $w=p_0/\ep_0$ and a concomitant (under the adiabatic assumption) density dependent speed of sound, $c_s$. We find a limited range of possibilities for a set up when modes start inside the Hubble radius, then leaving it and freezing out. For expanding Universes, power-law $w(\ep_0)$ model...

A period of slow contraction with equation of state w > 1, known as an ekpyrotic phase, has been shown to flatten and smooth the universe if it begins the phase with small perturbations. In this paper, we explore how robust and powerful the ekpyrotic smoothing mechanism is by beginning with highly inhomogeneous and anisotropic initial conditions and numerically solving for the subsequent evolution of the universe. Our studies, based on a universe with gravity plus a scalar fi...