Higgs cyclic model from Steinhardt, Turok, Bars

[palmer eldtrich]

Its been suggested that the metastibility of the Higgs may lead to a new cyclic cosmology to replace inflation.
http://arxiv.org/abs/1307.8106
Can anyone give a layman's guide to how this works and they propose to solve the problems of the big bang that inflation is supposed to solve:
flatness, horizon, structure and monopole.
Thanks

 

[Chalnoth]

Huh. Seems interesting. I have doubts about their treatment of anisotropy, but definitely an interesting model.

As for the problems that inflation solves, as I understand it, the "bounce" phase mimics inflation in many respects, so that these problems are all solved automatically.

My primary concern here is that the crunch phase would not come close to being approximated by an isotropic universe. The crunch comes from vacuum decay, which occurs at a specific place and spreads at close to the speed of light. This is an extremely anisotropic process: parts of the visible universe would start their recollapse billions of years after other parts. And the fact that we have a cosmological horizon means that a vacuum decay event near us would never reach most far-away galaxies (they would have to wait until a decay event occurred within their horizon). I have a hard time believing that it's possible to model such an extraordinarily anisotropic process as if it were isotropic and get anywhere close to the right answer.

 

[palmer eldtrich]

Hi Chalnoth, thanks for your answer. Can you explain how the bounce phase mimics inflation. I can see how a long period of contract could solve the horizon probolem, but how does it solve the flatness, monopole and structure problems? I can see you are not sympathetic to this model so I appreciate taking time to respond.
Also as I understand they are claiming the metastibility fo the Higgs leads dark energy to switch its value so there is a big crunch is that right?

 

[Chalnoth]

Hi Chalnoth, thanks for your answer. Can you explain how the bounce phase mimics inflation. I can see how a long period of contract could solve the horizon probolem, but how does it solve the flatness, monopole and structure problems? I can see you are not sympathetic to this model so I appreciate taking time to respond.
Also as I understand they are claiming the metastibility fo the Higgs leads dark energy to switch its value so there is a big crunch is that right?

Unfortunately I don't understand it so well myself. I gather that under sufficiently high energies/pressures, their model has gravity becoming repulsive, which is what produces the bounce, and that the high-pressure regime mimics inflation in many respects. But I carefully examined the math they used to show this.