HIGH ENERGY THEORY / RELATIVITY / COSMOLOGY SEMINARS
Spring 2007
Monday April 9 Seminar :
Laura Mersini (North Carolina University)
Title : A Debate in Cosmology
Abstract:
| The cosmological problem of the selection of the initial conditions of the universe and the observed late time acceleration seem to have become more severe with the recent findings of a landscape of vacua in string theory. Despite these challenges confronting theoretical physics at present, in this talk I will describe the progress made by studying the quantum dynamics of the gravitational and matter degrees of freedom for the initial patches on the landscape. In contrast to anthropic reasoning, this proposal offers a superselection rule for the initial conditions, emerging from the dynamics of the wavefunction of the universe on the landscape whereby the phase space of initial conditions is cleansed out of low energy inflationary patches due to gravitational instabilities. Traces of nonlocal entanglement redshifted from earlier times may provide the smoking gun for the landscape and specifically for testing the predictions of this proposal. |
Host : Trodden