Events for November, 2009

Friday, 13 November 2009 12:00 pm [see hoagie list] Princeton University ~ Gravity Group Astrophysics/Cosmology Lunch Jadwin 102 (Joe Henry Room) Speaker:   Eugene Lim (Columbia University) Topic:   Cosmological Bubble Nucleation via Collisions Abstract:   I will describe a new way of nucleating cosmological bubbles -- energy stored in relativistic bubble walls can provide sufficient kick to force the constituent field to go over a potential barrier and nucleate a new coherent bubble. While, this mechanism is most clearly demonstrated with high resolution numerical simulations in 3+1 dimensions, I will show that there is a simple semi-analytic description. In particular, I will argue that bubble collisions generically do not lead to catastrophic destruction of the bubble walls, but instead provide a non-probabilistic method of scanning the potential.