Quote:
Originally Posted by sjastro
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
|
You're right there...my mistake
I knew it was symmetry breaking that drove it, just got the two occurrences mixed up
I was reading in some of the papers...can't remember which, but they believe that the CC was acting much like a form of gravity, except in the anti sense. Probably not strictly correct, though.
Remember, mass and energy are interchangeable and in the conditions that occurred in the early Universe, that energy would've had extremely high density. That alone, would've produced gravitational effects as the energy would've essentially been massive....i.e. acted as mass would.
It would mean that photons and whatever else that was around at the time that constituted the energy budget of the Universe must've been interacting with the Higgs field in some fashion, or maybe under such extreme conditions Higgs bosons act much like photons. Don't ask me how, I'm not Stephen Hawking!!!!. It would mean that the Higgs Field must've come into existence either prior to inflation (maybe when gravity froze out) or during inflation. Now, what they have to do is find the Higgs. Anyway, enough of the conjecture