
JOINT PARTICLE SEMINAR
Date: Wednesday, 9
June 2004
Time:
3:00 p.m.
Place: 4135 Frederick Reines Hall
Speaker: Marvin
Weinstein, SLAC
Title:
Quantized Cosmology
Abstract: The problem of
inflation is formulated in the context of Friedmann-Robertson-Walker
Cosmology and then, after a simple change of variables, the problem is
quantized in a way which parallels the classical discussion.
The result is that two of the Einstein equations arise as
Heisenberg equations of motion, but the Friedmann equation needs
to be imposed as a constraint which one uses to define physical
states. However, the way in which this equation is to be applied,
is subtle. If one insists that the quantum mechanical formulation
of the theory make sense, then geometry, as embodied in the full
set of Einstein equations, is an emergent phenomenon, which becomes
increasingly true as the scale factor gets large. The meaning of
this general statement is clarified by exactly solving the case of de
Sitter space, where welcome additional terms appear in the quantum
version of the Friedmann equation and solve the problem of the big
crunch. Finally, I discuss the possible existence of measureable
corrections to the anisotropy in the CMB radiation due to these quantum
effects.
Host: J. Feng