Particle physics and the new cosmology

Conference · Sat Jan 01 04:00:00 EST 1983 · AIP Conf. Proc.; (United States)

OSTI ID:5822742

Steinhardt, P J

During the past year, astounding progress has been made in the development of a radically new theory of the evolution of the early Universe. The new theory derives from the possibility that the Universe underwent a symmetry breaking phase transition in its early history that was strongly first order. During such a transition, the Universe can supercool into a metastable phase with a large vacuum energy density which results in a period of exponential expansion. It has recently been shown that in special types of first order transitions the Universe can escape from the metastable phase to a stable phase. Without a vacuum energy density contribution to the total energy density, the Universe returns to the expansion rate found in the hot big bang model. The existence of an epoch of exponential growth leads to a natural explanation of the cosmological homogeneity, isotropy, flatness, monopole and domain wall problems that plague the standard hot big bang model. The new cosmology has also been shown to lead to a (nearly) scale invariant spectrum of density perturbations in the early Universe, just the spectrum many cosmologists believe is necessary to explain the evolution of galaxies and clusters in our Universe.

• Research Organization: Univ. of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia
• OSTI ID: 5822742
• Report Number(s): CONF-8210113-
• Conference Information: Journal Name: AIP Conf. Proc.; (United States) Journal Volume: 98
• Country of Publication: United States
• Language: English

Related Subjects

640106* -- Astrophysics & Cosmology-- Cosmology
645400 -- High Energy Physics-- Field Theory
71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS
GENERAL PHYSICS
72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS
COSMOLOGY
DENSITY
DISTRIBUTION
DOCUMENT TYPES
EXPANSION
FIELD THEORIES
GRAND UNIFIED THEORY
INVARIANCE PRINCIPLES
MATHEMATICAL MODELS
MONOPOLES
PARTICLE MODELS
PHASE TRANSFORMATIONS
PHYSICAL PROPERTIES
REVIEWS
SCALE INVARIANCE
SPATIAL DISTRIBUTION
STABILITY
SYMMETRY BREAKING
UNIFIED GAUGE MODELS
UNIFIED-FIELD THEORIES
UNIVERSE
VACUUM STATES