HIDDeN & ASYMMETRY WEBINAR:  5th December 2023 @16:00 (CET)  

Speaker: Alejandro Jenkins (Gdansk and Costa Rica) 

Title: Cosmology without scalars: Inflation, reheating, and baryogenesis in a superfluorescent Universe. 

Abstract: Based on the Markovian master equation for a localized system embedded in de Sitter (dS) space, we find that the dS vacuum acts as a thermal bath at the Gibbons-Hawking temperature h / 2 \pi, where h is the Hubble parameter.  An observer in the "cosmic rest frame" measures a background energy density proportional to h^4 (Stefan-Boltzmann law).  By extending this result adiabatically to non-constant h and including the bath's contribution in the Friedmann equations, we arrive at a picture of the irreversible relaxation of the cosmological constant (h -> 0) and a graceful exit to inflation.  Thermal particle production during inflation gives adiabatic, Gaussian, and approximately scale-invariant cosmological perturbations.  No separate reheating phase is needed and the observed matter-antimatter asymmetry can be obtained with fewer parameters than in previous models of gravitational baryogenesis.  This offers a simple and viable cosmology for the very early Universe without requiring any scalar fields, not even an inflaton. 

Slides: files/Cosmo-HIDDeN-23.key-Jenkins.pdf