Related papers: Cosmic Phase Transitions
According to the inflationary theory of cosmology, most elementary particles in the current universe were created during a period of reheating after inflation. In this work we self-consistently couple the Einstein-inflaton equations to a…
The early universe according to the big bang and the grand unified theories is discussed. The shortcomings of big bang are summarized together with their resolution by inflationary cosmology. Inflation, the subsequent oscillation and decay…
Many quantum condensed-matter systems, and probably the quantum vacuum of our Universe, are strongly correlated and strongly interacting fermionic systems, which cannot be treated perturbatively. However, physics which emerges in the…
We examine the first-order cosmological QCD phase transition for a large class of parameter values, previously considered unlikely. We find that the hadron bubbles can nucleate at very large distance scales, they can grow as detonations as…
In this paper we present the problem of quantum to classical transition of quantum fluctuations during inflation and in particular the question of evolution of entanglement. After a general introduction, three specific very recent works are…
For a system at a temperature of absolute zero, all thermal fluctuations are frozen out, while quantum fluctuations prevail. These microscopic quantum fluctuations can induce a macroscopic phase transition in the ground state of a many-body…
I make a brief review about the QCD phases and the equation of state inferred from the neutron star data. Along the temperature axis at low baryon density, the QCD phase transition is a smooth crossover, and it is a natural extension of our…
I review in this chapter several classes of quantum phase transitions that occur in quasi-one dimensional systems. I start by examining the simple case of coupled spin chains and ladders, then move to the case of bosons, and finally deal…
Strongly-coupled theories at the TeV can naturally drive a long period of supercooling in the early universe. Trapped into the deconfined phase, the universe could inflate and cool down till the temperature reaches the QCD strong scale. We…
Several models of baryo(lepto)-genesis that give rise to large inhomogeneities in the composition of the universe are presented. In particular, a variation of primordial abundances of light elements by the factor 2-5 at large distances is…
In this paper, starting from a lattice model of topological insulators, we study the quantum phase transitions among different quantum states, including quantum spin Hall state, quantum anomalous Hall state and normal band insulator state…
According to the most popular scenario, the early Universe should have experienced an accelerated expansion phase, called Cosmological Inflation, after which the standard Big Bang Cosmology would have taken place giving rise to the…
The linear cosmological perturbation theory of almost homogeneous and isotropic perfect fluid and scalar field universes is reconsidered and formally simplified. Using the existence of a covariant conserved quantity on large perturbation…
In the context of the half-centenary of Hagedorn temperature and the statistical bootstrap model (SBM) we present a short account of how these insights coincided with the establishment of the hot big-bang model (BBM) and helped resolve some…
A quantum system can undergo a continuous phase transition at the absolute zero of temperature as some parameter entering its Hamiltonian is varied. These transitions are particularly interesting for, in contrast to their classical finite…
Flat space cosmology spacetimes are exact time-dependent solutions of 3-dimensional gravity theories, such as Einstein gravity or topologically massive gravity. We exhibit a novel kind of phase transition between these cosmological…
A scenario for a quantum big crunch to big bang transition is proposed. We first clarify the similarities between this transition and the final stages of black hole evaporation. The black hole and the universe are thought of as quantum…
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…
We show how the quantum-to-classical transition of the cosmological fluctuations produced during an inflationary stage can be described using the consistent histories approach. We identify the corresponding histories in the limit of…
We consider the evolution of the ground state in the Two Higgs Doublet Model during cooling down of the Universe after the Big Bang. Different regions in the space of free parameters of this model correspond to different sequences of…