Astronomy and Astrophysics – Astrophysics
Scientific paper
2003-06-13
Astronomy and Astrophysics
Astrophysics
23 pages, 7 figures; to be published in "The Future of Theoretical Physics and Cosmology," eds: G.W. Gibbons, E.P.S. Shellard,
Scientific paper
This talk, which was presented at Stephen Hawking's 60th birthday conference, begins with a discussion of the early development of the theory of inflationary density perturbations. Stephen played a crucial role in this work, at every level. Much of the foundation for this work was laid by Stephen's 1966 paper on cosmological density perturbations, and by his 1977 paper with Gary Gibbons on quantum field theory in de Sitter space. Stephen was a major participant in the new work, and he was also a co-organizer of the 1982 Nuffield Workshop, where divergent ideas about inflationary density perturbations were thrashed about until a consensus emerged. In the second part of the talk I summarize the recent observational successes of these predictions, I present a graph of the probability distribution for the time of last scattering for CMB photons, and I summarize a recent theorem by Borde, Vilenkin, and me which shows that although inflation is generically eternal to the future, an inflationary region of spacetime must be incomplete in null and timelike past directions.
No associations
LandOfFree
Inflation and Cosmological Perturbations does not yet have a rating. At this time, there are no reviews or comments for this scientific paper.
If you have personal experience with Inflation and Cosmological Perturbations, we encourage you to share that experience with our LandOfFree.com community. Your opinion is very important and Inflation and Cosmological Perturbations will most certainly appreciate the feedback.
Profile ID: LFWR-SCP-O-27161