Speaker
Description
There are eighteen distinct topologies compatible with manifolds that admit a spatially flat Friedmann-Lemaître-Robertson-Walker metric. Seventeen of them--called non-trivial topologies--can be realized by introducing non-trivial topological boundary conditions. These boundary conditions constrain the allowed wavelengths of quantum fields living in such universes; consequently, non-trivial topology induces Casimir effects. We study the backreaction of the Casimir stress-energy tensor of a conformally coupled scalar field in a toroidal universe. Doing so, we quantify the consequences for a pure de Sitter inflationary era and, importantly, we identify local signatures that reflect the symmetries globally broken by the underlying topology.
The talk is based on: ArXiv:2603.12319
| Other topic / keywords: | Cosmic Topology |
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