Theory Group Seminar

Dr. Mustafa Amin, Rice University

"Wires to Cosmology"

2:00pm, RLM 7.104

Abstract: Current observations provide precise but limited information about inflation and reheating. Theoretical considerations, however, suggest that the early universe might be filled with a large number of interacting fields with unknown interactions. How can we quantitatively understand the dynamics of perturbations during inflation and reheating after inflation in such complicated scenarios and when only limited constraints are available from observations? Based on a precise mapping between particle production in cosmology to resistivity in disordered quasi one-dimensional wires, I provide a statistical framework to resolve such seemingly intractable calculations. A number of phenomenon in disordered wires find an analogue in particle production. For example, Anderson localization in quasi one-dimensional wires can be directly mapped to exponential particle production in the early universe. The talk will be focussed on the general framework and some toy examples, though in the end I will discuss possible (future) applications to calculating observables.