PIRSA:14060044

Inflation, Variable Speed of Light and BICEP2

Moffat, J. (2014). Inflation, Variable Speed of Light and BICEP2. Perimeter Institute. https://pirsa.org/14060044

Moffat, John. Inflation, Variable Speed of Light and BICEP2. Perimeter Institute, Jun. 12, 2014, https://pirsa.org/14060044 

          @misc{ pirsa_PIRSA:14060044,
            doi = {10.48660/14060044},
            url = {https://pirsa.org/14060044},
            author = {Moffat, John},
            keywords = {Cosmology},
            language = {en},
            title = {Inflation, Variable Speed of Light and BICEP2},
            publisher = {Perimeter Institute},
            year = {2014},
            month = {jun},
            note = {PIRSA:14060044 see, \url{https://pirsa.org}}
          }

John Moffat Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics

DOI 10.48660/14060044
Collection
Talk Type Scientific Series
Subject

Abstract

A variable speed of light (VSL) cosmology is developed with a spontaneous breaking of Lorentz invariance in the early universe. A non-minimal electromagnetic coupling to curvature and the resulting quantum electrodynamic vacuum polarization dispersive medium can produce c >> c0 in the early universe, where c0 is the measured speed of light today. Higher derivative curvature contributions to the effective gravitational action and quantum gravity vacuum polarization can produce a dispersive medium and a large increase in the speed of gravitational waves cg >> cg0 in the early universe, where cg0 is the speed of gravitational waves today. The initial value problems of cosmology are solved: the horizon and flatness problems. The model predicts primordial scalar and tensor fluctuation spectral indices ns=0.96 and nt=- 0.04, respectively. The BICEP2 observation of r=0.2 yields r/nt=-5 which is close to the single-field inflationary consistency condition r/nt=-8.