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Vacuum state is a configuration of quantum fields representing a local minimum (but not necessarily a global minimum) of energy. Inflationary models propose that at approximately 10 −36 seconds after the Big Bang, vacuum state of the Universe was different from the one seen at the present time: the inflationary vacuum had a much higher energy density.
When inflation ends, the temperature returns to the pre-inflationary temperature; this is called reheating or thermalization because the large potential energy of the inflaton field decays into particles and fills the Universe with Standard Model particles, including electromagnetic radiation, starting the radiation dominated phase of the Universe.
The inflaton field is a hypothetical scalar field which is conjectured to have driven cosmic inflation in the very early universe. [1] [2] [3] The field, originally postulated by Alan Guth, [1] provides a mechanism by which a period of rapid expansion from 10 −35 to 10 −34 seconds after the initial expansion can be generated, forming a universe not inconsistent with observed spatial ...
The history of the universe after inflation but before a time of about 1 second is largely unknown. [22] However, the universe is known to have been dominated by ultrarelativistic Standard Model particles, conventionally called radiation , by the time of neutrino decoupling at about 1 second. [ 23 ]
Starobinsky inflation is a modification of general relativity used to explain cosmological inflation. It was the first model to describe how the universe could have gone through an extremely rapid period of exponential expansion.
The Big Bang explains the evolution of the universe from a starting density and temperature that is well beyond humanity's capability to replicate, so extrapolations to the most extreme conditions and earliest times are necessarily more speculative. Lemaître called this initial state the "primeval atom" while Gamow called the material "ylem ...
Eternal inflation is a hypothetical inflationary universe model, which is itself an outgrowth or extension of the Big Bang theory. According to eternal inflation, the inflationary phase of the universe's expansion lasts forever throughout most of the universe. Because the regions expand exponentially rapidly, most of the volume of the universe ...
In physical cosmology, the graceful exit problem refers to an inherent flaw in the initial proposal of the inflationary universe theory proposed by Alan Guth in 1981. [1]In Guth’s model, the period of accelerated expansion (a.k.a. inflation) makes the universe homogeneous and flat but can never end.