|
Physical Society ColloquiumWanted Dead or Alive: Remnants of Superstring InflationIra WassermanCornellThe collision of D-branes seems to be a promising mechanism for realizing inflation in superstring cosmology. However, these theories also predict undesirable remnants - cosmic strings and tachyon matter. Tachyon matter must die somehow for a viable Big Bang to emerge, because it would lead to a matter dominated Universe that develops nonlinear large scale structure way too early. In order for the Big Bang to emerge from an early phase dominated by tachyon matter, or any other species that acts like nonrelativistic matter, the unwanted remnant has to be unstable. This talk will outline phenomenological pathways to successful decay. Cosmic strings can survive as long as they do not dominate the formation of large scale structure in the Universe. Available data from CMB observations and SDSS constrain the properties of cosmic strings, but do not rule them out altogether. The exciting possibility that we might be able to detect astronomical effects of cosmic strings produced during superstring inflation will be discussed - along with recent suggestions that such signatures have been detected already.
Wednesday, September 29th 2004, 15:30
Ernest Rutherford Physics Building, Keys Auditorium (room 112) |