The Seeds of Cosmic structure as a door to New Physics

Abstract

There is something missing in our understanding of the origin of the seeds of Cosmic Structuture. The fact that the fluctuation spectrum can be extracted from the inflationary scenario through an analysis that involves quantum field theory in curved space-time, and that it coincides with the observational data has lead to a certain complacency in the community, which prevents the critical analysis of the obscure spots in the derivation. The point is that the inhomogeneity and anisotropy of our universe seem to emerge from an exactly homogeneous and isotropic initial state through processes that do not break those symmetries. This article gives a brief recount of the problems faced by the arguments based on established physics, which comprise the point of view held by a large majority of researchers in the field. The conclusion is that we need some new physics to be able to fully address the problem. The article then exposes one avenue that has been used to address the central issue and elaborates on the degree to which, the new approach makes different predictions from the standard analyses. The approach is inspired on Penrose's proposals that Quantum Gravity might lead to a real, dynamical collapse of the wave function, a process that we argue has the properties needed to extract us from the theoretical impasse described above.

Prepared for the proceedings of the conference NEBXII " Recent Developments in Gravity", Napfio Grece June 2006. LateX, 15 pages

Cited by in corpus (5)

• Impact of dynamical collapse models on inflationary cosmology
• The slow roll condition and the amplitude of the primordial spectrum of cosmic fluctuations: Contrasts and similarities of standard account and the "collapse scheme"
• Multiple quantum collapse of the inflaton field and its implications on the birth of cosmic structure
• Origin of structure: Statistical characterization of the primordial density fluctuations and the collapse of the wave function
• A window to quantum gravity phenomena in the emergence of the seeds of cosmic structure