Quote:
Originally Posted by renormalised
When gravity froze out from the other three forces just as inflation began.
You could imagine that when the initial symmetry of the universe was broken, that may have produced rather large gravitational disturbances that inflation smoothed out. Remember, according to theory, the cosmological constant at the time was highly non zero, so gravity may have been predominantly repulsive instead of attractive. Inflation would have been driven by this, however in the process of inflation, the expansion would've greatly reduced the initial value of the constant, hence the effects of gravity (or it's antithesis if you consider it not to be gravity, per se).
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Inflation was initiated by the separation of the nucleur from the electromagnetic/weak forces, gravity was already a separate force.
The cosmological constant is not tied to gravity. The "nuts and bolts" of inflation involves the collapse of a false vacuum into a lower energy state with the subsequent release of energy and expansion of space-time.
From a GR perspective gravitational waves are formed by a change in space-time geometry. This can only if occur if there is a change of mass such as the merging of black holes or a supernova.
During the inflation period the change in space-time geometry is due to simple maths. Assuming spherical symmetry the curvature of space-time is inversely proportional to the square of the radius of the Universe.
A large percentage increase in radius during inflation would have caused a significant flattening of space-time.The Universe at this stage was very much dominated by radiation instead of mass and this is what I am struggling with.
How do you get gravitational waves at this stage of the Universe when mass as we know it only came into existence approximately half a million years later.
Regards
Steven