Cosmology A Research Briefing (1995) / Chapter Skim
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V. PHYSICS OF THE EARLY UNIVERSE
V. PHYSICS OF THE EARLY UNIVERSE
Pages 33-40
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From page 33... ...
In addition to the original version described here, many different variants have been presented, some with inflation occurring during the quantum gravity era, others with inflation occurring much later, each driven by different mechanisms. Although our understanding of particle physics is incomplete at these energies, and we have no understanding of the details of the inflationary epoch, inflation is an attractive concept because of its ability to resolve several long-standing cosmological conundrums.
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From page 34... ...
Clearly, it is important to identify this non-baryonic dark matter, by direct searches and by accelerator experiments, with particle theory providing guidance to focus the experiments. Chief among the theoretical elementary-particle candidates for non-baryonic dark matter are weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs)
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From page 35... ...
The experiments are therefore conducted deep underground to greatly reduce the cosmic ray flux and use extremely pure materials to minimize radioactive contamination. Like all direct searches for dark matter, these are high-risk experiments because of their technological challenges and because of the absence of precise predictions for the mass and the behavior of the WIMP candidates.
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From page 36... ...
The essential strategy comes mostly from theorists working at the boundary of particle physics, nuclear physics, and astrophysics-in the emerging field of particle astrophysics. In the past decade much common ground bias been found between the physics of the very small (elementary particles)
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From page 37... ...
Recent observational results from the COBE satellite have revolutionized how cosmologists think about structure in the universe, and current efforts to map tile fluctuations in the CMBR on smaller angular scales promise to show us details of the thermal history of the universe and to measure its fundamental parameters. Observations of large-scale structure in the universe as measured by the galaxy distribution have made dramatic progress in recent years, challenging all available theoretical models.
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From page 38... ...
Cold dark matter had a low velocity compared to the speed of light during the epoch of recombination. An example would be elementary particles with mass about equal to that of a proton or higher.
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From page 39... ...
Leptons: A class of elementary particles including electrons, muons, and tauons.
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From page 40... ...
A proposed orbiting infrared telescope. Standard candle: A celestial object whose intrinsic brightness is known or can be estimated by some physical principle and whose observed brightness is therefore useful as a too} to measure distance.
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