The Early Universe as a Probe of Fundamental Physics

by Prof. Marco Drewes (CP3)

Thursday 25 Jan 2018, 16:30 → 17:30 Europe/Brussels

CYCL01 (Cyclotron)

Many properties of the cosmos that we observe today can be understood as the result of quantum processes in the hot and dense plasma that filled the universe in the first moments after the "big bang". This allows cosmologists to understand the history of the observable universe in terms of elementary particles and the fundamental interactions between them. On the other hand, the extreme conditions in the primordial plasma allow particle physicists to test their ideas in an environment that cannot be created in the laboratory. With my research, I exploit this mutual benefit to learn about both, the fundamental laws of nature and how they shaped the cosmos that we live in. I will illustrate this with a few examples that connect quantum effects on the smallest scales to the fate of the universe as a whole.