15.05.2025 (Thursday)

String Theory and the First Half of the Universe

Regular Seminar Joseph Conlon (Oxford)

at:
14:00 Other
room LIMS, Royal Institution
abstract:

The period between inflation and nucleosynthesis can last for thirty orders of magnitude of time and represent half the lifetime of the universe on a logarithmic scale. But yet, there are minimal observational constraints on this epoch. String cosmologies motivate a rich set of modifications from the standard radiation-dominated post-inflationary assumption of Lambda CDM. In particular, string cosmology suggests the likelihood of moduli-dominated cosmologies through kination, tracker and matter epochs. I review the possible scenarios and observational possibilities, including a novel percolation scenario for formation of cosmic string networks.