Related papers: Phase Transitions in the Universe
As phenomena that necessarily emerge from the collective behavior of interacting particles, phase transitions continue to be difficult to predict using statistical thermodynamics. A recent proposal called the topological hypothesis suggests…
Over the past three years we have determined the basic features of the Universe -- spatially flat; accelerating; comprised of 1/3 a new form of matter, 2/3 a new form of energy, with some ordinary matter and a dash of massive neutrinos; and…
In this paper it is suggested that inclusion of mutual gravitational interactions among the particles in the early dense universe can lead to a 'pre-big bang' scenario, with particle masses greater than the Planck mass implying an…
Rising to Mach, the problem of establishing the unity of the physical essence of the Universe on all space-time scales of its evolution is, apparently, one of the main problems in contemporary epistemology. The issues are primarily related…
For two decades the hot big-bang model as been referred to as the standard cosmology -- and for good reason. For just as long cosmologists have known that there are fundamental questions that are not answered by the standard cosmology and…
We review a cosmology in which particles are fluctuationally created from a background Zero Point Field. This cosmology is consistent with recent observations of an ever expanding and accelerating universe, as also the recently confirmed…
For two decades the hot big-bang model has been referred to as the standard cosmology -- and for good reason. For just as long cosmologists have known that there are fundamental questions that are not addressed by the standard cosmology and…
We present a new approach to early universe cosmology. Inflation is replaced by a phase transition in which both matter and geometry are created simultaneously. We calculate the spectrum of metric perturbations and show that it is flat. We…
The sequence of phase transitions during the hot history of the universe is followed within a phenomenological framework. Particular emphasis is put on the QCD confinement transition, which is at reach under earth laboratory conditions. A…
The established cosmological theory which describes the history of the Universe since shortly after the "Big Bang" until today is remarkably successful. Thanks to the increasing precision of available observational data, we are now able to…
The Cyclic Model is a radical, new cosmological scenario which proposes that the Universe undergoes an endless sequence of epochs which begin with a `big bang' and end in a `big crunch.' When the Universe bounces from contraction to…
From the humble beginnings of particle physics to groundbreaking discoveries, the journey of particle physics has revolutionized our understanding of the universe. The progression of particle physics, begin from the discovery of new…
Topological defects are produced during phase transitions in the very early Universe. They arise in most unified theories of strong, weak and electromagnetic interactions. These lectures focus on the role of topological defects in…
Understanding the behavior of the universe at large depends critically on insights about the smallest units of matter and their fundamental interactions. Inflationary cosmology is a highly successful framework for exploring these…
The origin of the large scale structure in the universe - galaxies, quasars, clusters, voids, sheets - is one of the most important questions in cosmology. One can show that some non-thermal energy density fluctuations must have been…
This century has seen a dramatic increase in observational possibilities of the physics of the universe. Several of the very recent new developments with emphasis on the particle physics aspect and in particular Gamma-Gamma interactions are…
Inflationary cosmology explains the homogeneity and large-scale structure of the universe through a brief epoch of accelerated expansion following the Big Bang. Cyclic cosmologies, in contrast, describe a universe undergoing successive…
From an observational perspective cosmology is today in excellent shape - advances in instrumentation and data processing have enabled us to study the universe in detail back to when the first galaxies formed, map the fluctuations in the…
We explore the emergence of many-body physics from quantum mechanics via spontaneous symmetry breaking. To this end, we study potentials which are functionals on the space of Hamiltonians enjoying an unstable critical point corresponding to…
A unified field theory in ten dimensions, of all interactions, can describe high energy processes occuring in the early universe. In such a theory transitions that give properties of the universe can occur due to the presence of algebraic…