Large-Scale Structure Formation via Quantum Fluctuations and Gravitational Instability

Abstract

This is a review of the status of the universe as described by the standard cosmological model combined with the inflationary paradigm. Their key features and predictions, consistent with the WMAP (Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropies Probe) and Planck Probe 2013 results, provide a significant mechanism to generate the primordial gravitational waves and the density perturbations which grow over time, and later become the large-scale structure of the universe—from the quantum fluctuations in the early era to the structure observed 13.7 billion later, our epoch. In the single field slow-roll paradigm, the primordial quantum fluctuations in the inflaton field itself translate into the curvature and density perturbations which grow over time via gravitational instability. High density regions continuously attract more matter from the surrounding space, the high density regions become more and more dense in time while depleting the low density regions. At late times the highest density regions peaks collapse into the large structure of the universe, whose gravitational instability effects are observed in the clustering features of galaxies in the sky. Thus, the origin of all structure in the universe probably comes from an early era where the universe was filled with a scalar field and nothing else.