Gravity Initiative Lunch, Stephen Adler | IAS "Implications of a Frame-Dependent Dark Energy for the Spacetime Metric and "Hubble Tension""

Date
Feb 24, 2020, 12:30 pm12:30 pm
Location
Princeton Gravity Initiative, 4th Floor

Details

Event Description

Abstract:   I discuss the possibility that the ''dark energy'' that drives the accelerated expansion of the universe arises not from a conventional cosmological constant term in the gravitational action, but rather from a frame-dependent but Weyl scaling invariant action term.   This action mimics the standard cosmological action in an unperturbed Friedmann-Robertson-Walker (FRW) cosmology, but has novel consequences both for black hole horizons and, the focus of this talk,  for perturbations around the FRW solution.  I discuss motivations for a Weyl invariant cosmological action, new insights it would give on old problems, and Implications for the recently much discussed ''Hubble Tension''.  The talk keeps technicalities to a minimum, requiring only a basic knowledge of  FRW cosmology and ordinary differential equations, and concludes with a list of problems for further study, some of which could be undergraduate paper or thesis topics.