The Universe Before the Big Bang Inflation and the Birth of the Universe Finally, the reader may ask why the phase of pre-Big-Bang inflation has been represented in Fig. 5.3 by plotting two different types of behavior of the spatial radius, corresponding to the solid curves labeled by R (the inner one) and RE (the … Read more
The Universe Before the Big Bang Inflation and the Birth of the Universe The standard cosmological model, which describes the current Universe in terms of its matter and radiation components, and covers a seemingly long period of time – more than 10 billion years, from epochs preceding the synthesis of nuclear elements until now – … Read more
The Universe Before the Big Bang The Theory of Strings Hence, the observed processes can be suitably described by applying the formalism of quantum field theory following the standard model of elementary particle physics, without any reference to string theory. The same conclusion applies to the gravitational force if we limit ourselves to sufficiently flat … Read more
The Universe Before the Big Bang The Theory of Strings This chapter is devoted to those readers interested in the physical foundations of pre-Big-Bang cosmology and who wish to learn the basic concepts of the theory of one-dimensional extended objects – usually dubbed string theory. In particular, we will try to outline here the quantum … Read more
