ICTP 2018 Salam Distinguished Lecture Series:
"Inflationary Cosmology: Is Our Universe Part
of a Multiverse? ".
ICTP is pleased to announce that Professor Alan Guth, will
deliver this year’s Salam Distinguished Lecture Series
on 29, 30 and 31 January in the Budinich Lecture Hall,
ICTP, at 17:00.
Biosketch: Alan Guth is the Victor
F. Weisskopf Professor of Physics and a Margaret MacVicar
Faculty Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology. Trained in particle theory at MIT, Guth held
postdoc positions at Princeton, Columbia, Cornell, and
SLAC (the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center) before
returning to MIT as a faculty member in 1980. His work in
cosmology began at Cornell, when fellow postdoc Henry Tye
persuaded him to study the production of magnetic
monopoles in the early universe. Using standard
assumptions, they found that far too many would be
produced. Continuing this work at SLAC, Guth discovered
that the magnetic monopole glut could be avoided by a new
proposal which he called the inflationary universe. Guth's
honors include ICTP's Dirac Prize, the Breakthrough Prize
in Fundamental Physics, and the 2014 Kavli Prize in
Astrophysics. Guth is still busy exploring the
consequences of inflation. He has also written a
popular-level book called "The Inflationary Universe: The
Quest for a New Theory of Cosmic Origins"
(Addison-Wesley/Perseus Books, 1997)
There will be 3 lectures, on 29, 30 and 31 January 2018,
start time: 17.00 hrs.
Lecture I: "Inflationary Cosmology: Is Our Universe
Part of a Multiverse?" Abstract: Inflationary cosmology
gives a plausible explanation for many observed features
of the universe, including its uniformity, its mass
density, and the patterns of the ripples that are observed
in the cosmic microwave background. Beyond what we can
observe, most versions of inflation imply that our
universe is not unique, but is part of a possibly infinite
multiverse. I will describe the workings of inflation, the
evidence for inflation, and why I believe that the
possibility of a multiverse should be taken seriously.
Lecture II: "Eternal Inflation and its
Implications" Abstract: This lecture will further explore
the connection between inflation and the multiverse. I
will describe the mechanism of inflation in more detail,
showing why most versions lead to eternal inflation: once
inflation starts, it never completely stops, but instead
the inflating region grows forever, producing "pocket
universes" ad infinitum. Eternal inflation is in some ways
very attractive, because, for example, it offers a
possible explanation for why the energy density of the
vacuum is so incredibly small. But it also leads to the
"measure problem": how does one define probabilities in an
infinite system in which any allowed event is expected to
occur an infinite number of times?
TODAY, Lecture III: "Infinite Phase
Space and the Two-Headed Arrow of Time" Abstract: One of
the unsolved mysteries of physics is the arrow of time:
the laws of physics make no distinction between the future
and the past, but in our experience they are entirely
different. The arrow of time can be identified with the
growth of entropy, but what caused the entropy to be lower
in the past? I will describe a speculative picture which
shows how an arrow of time can develop naturally, provided
that the available phase space is infinite, even in a
system with time-reversible laws of physics, and with no
special initial conditions. I will also discuss the
alternative possibility that the phase space available to
the universe is finite, arguing that this assumption leads
to serious cosmological problems.
The ICTP Salam Distinguished Lecture Series is
sponsored by the Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement
of Sciences.
The lecture series will also be livestreamed from the
ICTP website at: http://video.ictp.it/livestream
For more information, see also: http://indico.ictp.it/event/8289/
You are all warmly invited to attend. Light refreshments
will be served after the lectures.
Kind regards,
Fernando Quevedo
Director