Engineering topics
Publications and source records attributed to Widrow, Lawrence M..
Nambu-Goldstone modes are sensitive to the effects of physics at energies comparable to the scale of spontaneous symmetry breaking. We show that as a consequence of this the global texture proposal for structure formation requires rather severe assumptions about the nature of physics at the Planck scale.
Studied here is reheating in theories where inflation is completed by a first-order phase transition. In the scenarios, the Universe decays from its false vacuum state by bubble nucleation. In the first stage of reheating, vacuum energy is converted into kinetic energy for the bubble walls. To help understand this phase, researchers derive a simple expression for the equation of state of a universe filled with expanding bubbles. Eventually, the bubble walls collide. Researchers present numerical simulations of two-bubble collisions clarifying and extending previous work by Hawking, Moss, and Stewart. The researchers' results indicate that wall energy is efficiently converted into coherent scalar waves. Also discussed is particle production due to quantum effects. These effects lead to the decay of the coherent scalar waves. They also lead to direct particle production during bubble-wall collisions. Researchers calculate particle production for colliding walls in both sine-Gordon and theta (4) theories and show that it is far more efficient in the theta (4) case. The relevance of this work for recently proposed models of first order inflation is discussed.
It has been suggested that large-scale structure can be seeded by a postrecombination phase transition that produces soft domain walls. It is found that oscillating domain-wall bubbles produce a distinctive signature on the microwave sky; hot and cold spots with amplitude characterized by G(sigma)/H0 (sigma is the surface tension of the wall). These fluctuations are non-Gaussian and offer a powerful probe of such models.
Classical non-topological soliton configurations are considered within the theory of a complex scalar field with a gauged U symmetry. Their existence and stability against dispersion are demonstrated and some of their properties are investigated analytically and numerically. The soliton configuration is such that inside the soliton the local U symmetry is broken, the gauge field becomes massive and for a range of values of the coupling constants the soliton becomes a superconductor pushing the charge to the surface. Furthermore, because of the repulsive Coulomb force, there is a maximum size for these objects, making impossible the existence of Q-matter in bulk form. Also briefly discussed are solitons with fermions in a U gauge theory.
The promise of the inflationary-universe scenario is to free the present state of the universe from extreme dependence upon initial data. Paradoxically, inflation is usually analyzed in the context of the homogeneous and isotropic Robertson-Walker cosmological models. It is shown that all but a small subset of the homogeneous models undergo inflation. Any initial anisotropy is so strongly damped that if sufficient inflation occurs to solve the flatness and horizon problems, the universe today would still be very isotropic.