Mathematics – Logic
Scientific paper
Feb 2005
adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2005cqgra..22..773b&link_type=abstract
Classical and Quantum Gravity, Volume 22, Issue 4, pp. 773 (2005).
Mathematics
Logic
Scientific paper
This new book is intended for students and researchers who want to go into the interplay between cosmology and high-energy physics. It assumes a prior knowledge of these subjects such as some of the topics contained in the previous books by the authors, Introduction to Gauge Field Theory (1993 Bristol: Institute of Physics Publishing) and Supersymmetric Gauge Field Theory and String Theory (1994 Bristol: Institute of Physics Publishing). However, the book is intended to be self-contained, explaining, from a modern perspective, some background material mainly in standard cosmology, topological defects, baryogenesis, inflationary cosmology and, at the end of the book, some of the basics of string theory.
What is distinctively new about this book is that it lies in the interplay between cosmology and high-energy physics typically above 100 GeV (1015 K). Often these subjects are presented in regular textbooks in a disconnected way, or in research papers, proceedings and review papers but usually not in a pedagogical style. Thus, in this sense, the book is unique and deserves a special place in the recent literature.
The book starts by reviewing the standard material of the early universe. The standard model of cosmology from a modern perspective is revised in chapter 1. In chapter 2, phase transitions in different models are discussed, Higgs, electroweak, GUTs, supersymmetric GUTs and supergravity, by using quantum field theory at finite temperature. Chapter 3 is devoted to a general account of topological defects and discusses how they arise as possible remnants of these phase transitions in GUTs. Other relics, such as neutrinos and axions, are introduced in chapter 5 and their impact in cosmology is assessed. In chapter 4, some of the most relevant mechanisms of baryogenesis are discussed in the context of the different GUTs and the minimal supersymmetric standard model (MSSM). Inflation is also discussed in the context of GUTs. In chapter 6, the authors introduce the dark matter proposal in terms of the WIMPS arising in supersymmetric gauge theory, in particular, from the MSSM.
A modern overview of the different mechanisms involved in the process of inflation is the aim of chapter 7. This is a preliminary to the well written discussion of inflation in the context of four-dimensional supergravity in chapter 8. In the remaining chapters, the authors focus on more recent subjects that are the arena of intense research, such as cosmology and black holes in string theory. From the different proposals in the literature, the authors have captured the more basic and relevant material without engaging in discussion of any particular recent proposal, for instance, the new results of string compactifications with fluxes and their application to cosmological models or the study of cosmological models driven by tachyonic matter. Both are open problems.
I have no doubt that this book will be valuable for students of high-energy physics and gravitation taking courses in modern aspects of cosmology, and for people preparing their PhD in this subject. The other books by the authors that I have mentioned have been present in introductory courses of the subject as text or reference books for many years. Their new book will surely follow this same fate.
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