Monday, October 13, 2008, Joint Physics Colloquium, 4:30 PM, 104 Thaw Hall, PITT

Andrei Frolov

Simon Frazer University

"Simulating the Big Bang"

Abstract:

The idea of inflation (a period of rapid quasi-exponential expansion of the Universe) neatly solves several issues in cosmology. While the Universe is inflating, its contents are cold. Eventually, inflation ends and the field driving the inflation must decay, depositing energy into high-energy particles. This process, known as reheating, starts the hot big bang as we know it, and could allow a glimpse of physics at energies we know very little about. I will discuss a simple scalar field model of reheating, which for all its simplicity has rich physics involving parametric resonance, non-linear evolution, and turbulence. I will illustrate this dynamical behavior with simulation using a new numerical solver I developed.