Physical Society Colloquium
Special Physics Seminar
Challenges for String Cosmology
Robert Brandenberger
Physics Department
Brown University
In spite of the spectacular success of inflationary Universe cosmology at
explaining the observed cosmic microwave anisotropies, the inflationary
scenario suffers from some serious conceptual problem. I will explain why
string theory has the potential to address many of these problems. However,
since the non-perturbative formulation of string theory is not yet known, we
do not yet have a definite theory of string cosmology. `Brane gas
cosmology' is an approach to string cosmology which makes use of states
and symmetries of string theory which are not present in ordinary quantum
field theory. Brane gas cosmology has the potential of yielding a nonsingular
cosmology which predicts the number of large spatial dimensions. I will
discuss the challenges for brane gas cosmology.
Monday, October 27th 2003, 15:30
Ernest Rutherford Physics Building, R.E. Bell Conference Room (room 103)
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