U.S.-Switzerland Cooperative Research on Issues in Gravitation and Cosmology

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9312335 Brandenberger This award supports a group of three U.S. researchers and their graduate students, led by Professor Robert H. Brandenberger of Brown University, to collaborate in theoretical physics with Professor Christoph Schmid and others of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) and the University of Zurich. These research groups represent centers of excellence that share an interest in understanding the physics of the very early universe. The participants bring complementary expertise in particle physics, field theory, astrophysics, and cosmology to the cooperative effort. A collateral goal of the proposed project is to enable the junior U.S. and Swiss participants to broaden their intellectual horizons through international collaboration. The joint research will focus on three topics of mutual interest: 1) applications of the theory of cosmological perturbations to gravitation and cosmology; 2) application of entropy arguments to the theory of cosmological phase transitions; and 3) construction of a nonsingular universe. This research addresses several intriguing questions about the physics of the early universe. The combinations of different backgrounds and perspectives among the participants increases the potential contribution of the research toward improved understanding of the formation of large scale structures in the universe. This area of cosmology is particularly interesting now because of recent and planned satellite observations that measure anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background and the clusters, superclusters and the walls and voids of galaxies. These observations may provide means of evaluating and refining the models and otherwise advancing the research of the U.S. and Swiss collaborators. ***