Related papers: Cosmological Experiments in Condensed Matter Syste…
Examining the reverse evolution of the universe from the present, long before reaching Planck density dynamics one expects major modifications from the de-coherent thermal equations of state, suggesting a prior phase that has macroscopic…
Stasis is a unique cosmological phenomenon in which the abundances of different energy components in the universe (such as matter, radiation, and vacuum energy) each remain fixed even though they scale differently under cosmological…
Liquid crystals are assemblies of rod-like molecules which self-organize to form mesophases, in-between ordinary liquids and anisotropic crystals. At each point, the molecules collectively orient themselves along a privileged direction,…
Motivated by the study of cosmological phase transitions, our understanding of the formation of topological defects during spontaneous symmetry-breaking and the associated non-equilibrium field theory has recently changed. Experiments have…
A (very) brief review of topological defects and their possible cosmic roles. I emphasize in particular that superheavy defects needed for structure formation can peacefully coexist with inflation, despite the claims to the contrary which…
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…
Recent years have seen tremendous progress in our understanding of the extreme universe, which in turn points to even deeper questions to be further addressed. History has shown that the symbiosis between direct observations and laboratory…
Since the discovery of topological insulators, many topological phases have been predicted and realized in a range of different systems, providing both fascinating physics and exciting opportunities for devices. And although new materials…
Cosmological stasis is a new type of epoch in the cosmological timeline during which the cosmological abundances of different energy components -- such as vacuum energy, matter, and radiation -- remain constant despite the expansion of the…
Several approaches to the matter creation problem in the context of cosmological models are summarily reviewed. A covariant formulation of the general relativistic imperfect simple fluid endowed with a process of matter creation is…
Kibble and Zurek have provided a unifying causal picture for the appearance of classical defects like cosmic strings or vortices at the onset of phase transitions in relativistic QFT and condensed matter systems respectively. In condensed…
Recent years have seen tremendous progress in our understanding of the cosmos, which in turn points to even deeper questions to be further addressed. Concurrently the laser technology has undergone dramatic revolutions, providing exciting…
These lecture notes aim to provide an introduction to dark matter from the perspective of astrophysics/cosmology. We start with a rapid overview of cosmology, including the evolution of the Universe, its thermal history and structure…
Cosmic voids, the large underdense regions of our Universe, have emerged over the past decade as powerful cosmological laboratories: their simple dynamics, sensitivity to local gravitational effects and cosmic expansion, and ability to span…
Topological defects, in particular cosmic strings, give rise to an interesting mechanism for generating the primordial perturbations in the early Universe which are required to explain the present structure. An overview of the cosmic string…
The grand canonical thermodynamics of a bosonic system is studied in order to identify the footprint of its own high-density quantum phase transition. The phases displayed by the system at zero temperature establish recognizable patterns at…
The different phases of QCD at finite temperature and density lead to interesting effects in cosmology and astrophysics. In this work I review some aspects of the cosmological QCD transition and of astrophysics at high baryon density.
The network of cosmological tests is tight enough now to show that the relativistic Big Bang cosmology is a good approximation to what happened as the universe expanded and cooled through light element production and evolved to the present.…
In the framework of the Closed-Time-Path formalism, we show how topological defects may arise in Quantum Field Theory as result of a localized (inhomogeneous) condensation of particles. We demonstrate our approach on two examples; kinks in…
We consider a model of interacting cosmological constant/quintessence, where dark matter and dark energy behave as, respectively, two coexisting phases of a fluid, a thermally excited Bose component and a condensate, respectively. In a…