General Relativity

Introduction to General Relativity and Cosmology
C.U., Physics, PG 4th semester Anirban Kundu
Contents
1 Why General Relativity? 1.1 1.2 1.3 Flat space . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Curved space . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Curved space-time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 4 5 6 7 7 9
AK / GR and Cosmology / 2011
2 The Equivalence Principle 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 The E otv os experiment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . The equivalence principle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Free fall . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Metric and ane connection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Weak gravity: the Newtonian limit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Gravitational redshift: Apparent weight of photons . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 15
3 The Schwarzschild Metric 3.1 3.2
Black holes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Black holes are not forever . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 18
4 The Einstein Equation 4.1 4.2 4.3
Curvature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 Einstein equation in vacuum . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 Einstein equation for matter: the FRW geometry . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 23 24
5 Newtonian Cosmology 6 Modern Cosmology 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4
Microscopic content of the universe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 Macroscopic content of the universe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26 The uid equation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 The Hubble parameter revisited . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27 6.4.1 6.4.2 The density parameter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28 The deceleration parameter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
6.5
The redshift . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29 30
7 The evolution of the universe
7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4
Matter dominance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 Radiation dominance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 Mixtures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 More exotic situations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31 33
8 The universe 8.1 8.2 8.3
The age of the universe . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 The cosmic microwave background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34 The horizon problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 37 39
9 The early universe 10 Nucleosynthesis
10.1 Helium abundance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 10.2 Deuterium abundance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41 10.3 Baryogenesis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42 11 Ination 43
This note is based upon the following textbooks: Weinberg: Gravitation and Cosmology Hartle: Gravity Liddle: An Introduction to Modern Cosmology Kolb and Turner: The Early Universe Dodelson: Modern Cosmology Narlikar: Introduction to Cosmology You must read the original textbooks, particularly the rst four. Remember that the supplementary problems form an integral part of the course. Notation: In contrast to my electrodynamics course, and quantum eld theory and particle physics courses, I will use the at space-time (Minkowski) metric = diag(1, 1, 1, 1). This makes the invariant interval ds2 = dt2 + dx2 + dy 2 + dz 2 . Ill use c = 1, but not h = 1. Also, I will not use the relativists convention of G = 1. Why such a change? The main reason is that this is the metric that the relativists use, and if we want their equations to match with ours (except, maybe, a factor of c raised to some power), we must use this metric. Why do they use this metric when it gives p2 = m2 ? Because for them, the curvature of space-time is the more important thing. They do not want to have a negative curvature for a sphere, so there is no minus sign in the spatial coordinates. A four-dimensional vector will be labeled by a Greek index. All Greek indices run from 0 to 3, and all Latin indices run from 1 to 3. All repeated indices are implicitly summed over.
G c me
6.672 1011 m3 /kg/s2 2.998 108 m/s 3.076 107 Mpc/yr 0.511 MeV
h kB mp
1.055 1034 J-s 1.381 1023 J/K 8.619 105 eV/K 938.3 MeV
1 pc 1 yr 1 eV 1 M
3.086 1016 m 3.156 107 s 1.602 1019 J, or 11602.27 K 1.989 1030 kg (13.75 0.11) 109 yr .3 70.4+1 1.4 km/s/Mpc H0 /100 0.0456 0.0016 0.02260 0.00053 0.227 0.014 0.1123 0.0035 .015 0.728+0 0.016 3232 87 .68 1090.89+0 0.69 +3205 3777303200 yr
Age of universe Hubble constant H0 Reduced Hubble constant h Baryon density b Physical baryon density b h2 Cold dark matter density DM Physical CDM density DM h2 Cosmological constant density Redshift at matter-radiation equality Redshift at photon decoupling Age of decoupling
Table 1: Some cosmological parameters, obtained from the combined set of 7-year data taken by the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP), Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) and the Hubble Space Telescope. This is the most current average released in 2010.
Why General Relativity?
Why should we study General Theory of Relativity (GTR)? Simply because this is an astrophysics course and one of the cornerstones of modern-day astrophysics is GTR. Starting from the big bang the creation of the universe to the exciting objects like quasars, active galactic nuclei, black holes, neutron stars, binary pulsars, GTR is applied everywhere. It is not that GTR is tested in these systems; it has already been tested in several laboratory experiments as well as in experiments in the solar system. A better analogy would have been the Schr odinger equation and its numerous applications in atomic, molecular, nuclear, and solid-state physics. So, what is GTR? It is a theory of gravity; a classical theory since gravity has not yet been quantised. Its input is the fact that space-time is curved. GTR calculates the curvature and gives a very profound result: gravity is the geometry of space-time! In other words, gravity is not like the electromagnetic eld if you have a mass, the nearby space-time gets curved, and the distortion appears as gravity. One may compare it with Newtonian gravity, a theory with a at space-time but a eld and its source. It is expected that in the experiments where the curvature of space-time plays a crucial role, these two theories can be distinguished. Unfortunately, gravity is so weak that in most of the cases, the distortion is very small, so the distinction between these two theories is tiny; and one needs very precise and careful experiments to verify GTR. After all, experiment is the nal arbiter in physics. We will discuss some of these tests, and GTR has been vindicated in all of them. Since its formulation, GTR was thought of, and perhaps not unjustiably, as a theory whose mathematics is too complicated for physicists. The reason is its heavy dependence on a branch of mathematics called dierential geometry. One may contrast it with quantum mechanics, whose mathematics was relatively easy but the physics, in its early years, was confusing and dicult to grasp (one may like to go through the correspondences between Einstein and Bohr). Nowadays, we do not attach too much importance on geometry; we know how to extract the basic physics of gravity without being an expert in dierential geometry. This is the approach taken by Weinberg, who, in his classic text, motivated GTR from the principle of equivalence, i.e., from the fact that the gravitational mass and the inertial mass of a body are the same (more on this later). I would like to emphasize that you can be a successful astrophysicist or cosmologist if you have the basic knowledge of the physics of GTR, without getting lost in the quagmire of dierential geometry. The rst part of this course just introduces you to the subject; it is too brief to give you even a cursory coverage. GTR relates the space-time curvature with the energy density (to be very precise, the stressenergy tensor). So let us rst try to have an idea of what curved space-time means.
1.1
Flat space
We start with the fth postulate of Euclid as stated in his famous treatise Elements: If a straight line falling on two straight lines make the interior angles on the same side less than two right angles, the two straight lines produced indenitely meet on that side on which the angles are less than two right angles. The postulate cannot be proved; you must assume it to be true. Then the postulate gives you the denition of parallel lines; lines that never meet even if extended to innity. This postulate basically denes at space. In a 2-dimensional at space, a line element can be written as
2 ds2 = dx2 1 + dx2 .
(1)
This is nothing but Pythagoras theorem. Here x1 and x2 are orthogonal cartesian axes, so we can 4
write ds2 = gIJ dxI dxJ (2) (I, J = 1, 2) with g11 = g22 = 1, g12 = g21 = 0. The metric is just the 2 2 unit matrix. This may appear to be a good denition of a at space, but beware: it is not! For example, I can use the plane polar coordinate system, where ds2 = dr 2 + r 2 d 2 (3)
and so g11 = 1 but g22 = r 2 the metric is no longer the unit matrix. So we must look for some other denition of a at space.
1.2
Curved space
While Euclids fth postulate cannot be proved, it is possible to have geometries without the fth postulate. In 19th century, mathematicians Gauss, Bolyai, and Lobachevski independently formulated such geometries, which have no internal inconsistencies, but the space is not at it is curved. Consider the surface of a sphere. On a at space, the angles of a triangle sum up to 180 . What about a spherical triangle, i.e., a triangle whose sides all lie on the surface of a sphere? It is obvious that the sum will be more than 180 . For example, consider the triangle formed by the Greenwich longitude, the 90 east longitude and the equator; the longitudes cut all latitude lines at right angles, so all angles of this triangle are 90 and they sum up to 270 . Also note that if you make the triangle smaller and smaller, the sum of the angles tend to 180 , i.e., the space is locally at 1 . What about the fth postulate? That is obviously not valid, since all longitudes are parallel lines, but they meet at the poles. This is a nite curved space (the area of the sphere is nite), so we cannot extend any line to innity. We can, however, think of saddle-like spaces. The saddle is convex along the body of the horse but concave along its spine, and so can be extended upto innity. The separation between two close points on the surface of a sphere of radius a, located at (, ) and ( + d, + d) is given by ds2 = a2 (d 2 + sin2 d2 ) (4) (see g. 2.6 of Hartle). The metric, obviously, is given by g11 = a2 , g22 = a2 sin2 , g12 = g21 = 0. (5)
This metric looks almost identical to the at space plane polar metric, so how do we know that this space is indeed curved? One must have some quantity, which is an intrinsic property of the space, and should not depend on the choice of the coordinate system. Gauss derived such a quantity, which is called the Gaussian curvature. The expression can be found in eq. 1.1.12 of Weinberg. Let us spend some more time on the 2-dimensional curved space. We have already talked about two such spaces: the sphere, which is a nite space with a xed positive curvature, given by K = 1/a2 (6)
where a is the radius of the sphere. The saddle, on the other hand, is an innite space of negative curvature, but the curvature is not xed (it is positive in one direction and negative in the other).
1 There can be no straight line on the surface of the sphere. The analogue of the straight lines are the great circles, circles which lie entirely on the surface of the sphere and whose centres coincide with the centre of the sphere. All longitudes are great circles, so is the equator; but other latitude lines are not.
What Gauss et al. considered was an innite space of constant negative curvature; such a space is impossible to visualise, but one can mathematically construct it. Why do we need a xed curvature? Because the curvature denes the inner property of a space, its intrinsic property and unless the curvature is constant the space wont be homogeneous, so other postulates of Euclid will be violated. We will, however, concentrate on the sphere. Given a curved space, the rst task is to construct the geometry of that space. This means that one has to obtain the metric. The metric gives you the separation between two nearby points: ds2 = gIJ dxI dxJ (we will use uppercase indices for 2-dimensional space). Now, if it were a at space, I could have written, in cartesian coordinates, ds2 = IJ dxI dxJ where is the 2 2 unit matrix. I can never do so for a curved space, but: If we consider a suciently small region in a curved space, it is possible to nd a locally Euclidean coordinate system so that the distance between two nearby points (1 , 2 ) and (1 + d1 , 2 + d2 ) is 2 + d 2 . given by the Pythagoras theorem: ds2 = d1 2 This seems to be a very trivial statement all of us, in our school days, have drawn triangles whose angles sum up to 180 but it is not, and we will come back to this statement later. For now, we see that while it is possible to have such locally Euclidean frames, one cannot cover any nite amount of surface with a single Euclidean frame; to cover the entire sphere, one must have an innite number of such Euclidean frames. Now suppose we choose some other coordinate system (x1 , x2 ) that covers a nite part of the sphere maybe the whole surface. How should the separation look like? Well, both the Euclidean variables 1 and 2 are functions of x1 and x2 , so we can write 1 1 dx1 + dx2 , (7) d1 = x1 x2 and hence 2 ds2 = g11 (x1 , x2 )dx2 (8) 1 + 2g12 (x1 , x2 )dx1 dx2 + g22 (x1 , x2 )dx2 where g11 = g22 = g12 = 1 x1 1 x2 1 x1
2
+
2
2 x1 2 x2 +
,
2
, 2 x1 2 . x2 (9)
1 x2
Such a space is called a metric space. The derivation can be turned the other way: given a metric space, we can at any point choose a locally Euclidean frame.
1.3
Curved space-time
The next step is conceptually easy, but actually it needed the genius of a great mathematician, Georg Riemann, for a successful construction of a higher dimensional curved space. The reason is that there is no unique curvature for a higher dimensional space and the geometry becomes much more complicated. The mathematical framework was constructed by Riemann and other mathematicians, but it was Einstein who saw the physics in it. We know what a at or Minkowski space-time is:
ds2 = dt2 + dx2 i = dx dx
(10)
where the Minkowski metric = diag(1, 1, 1, 1) and we have used c = 1 2 . Therefore, for a curved
This metric has an overall minus sign compared to the one that I used in my electrodynamics course, and will use in the quantum eld theory and particle physics courses. The reason is that this makes life simpler for you when you compare standard textbooks.
2
space-time, we should have ds2 = g dx dx (11) where the elements of the symmetric tensor g are functions of the coordinates. Again, we expect that it is possible to nd innitesimal regions where g = the space-time is locally at. Suppose I have such an innitesimally at space-time; then I can write ds2 = d d . Equating these two, I get . x x Remember that the coordinates change if we go to another space-time point. g = (12)
(13)
The theoretical introduction is almost complete; now we will look into an important experiment and its consequences. Q. The sum of the interior angles for a spherical triangle is + A/a2 where A is the area of the triangle and a is the radius of the circle. Find the area of the triangle bounded by the equator and the longitudes 0 and 60 . What is the maximum possible area of a spherical triangle? Q. A ball is thrown from the ground level at an angle 45 with the vertical, and it falls back to the ground after 2 seconds. Dening the plane in which the ball moved to be the x-y plane, draw the space-time diagram of the motion of the ball. Convince yourself that the ball moves in an almost straight line in the space-time diagram. Q. What is the value of K for a plane? Q. Derive eq. (9).
2
2.1
The Equivalence Principle

The E otv os experiment
If you drop two dierent objects from the same height, they take equal time to fall to the ground (assuming, of course, that the air resistance is negligible). In a spaceship orbiting around the earth, everything is weightless; everything, from the astronauts to the paperweights, fall towards the earth with the same acceleration. It has been tested by a very precise experiment (see box 2.1 of Hartle) that earth and moon fall with the same acceleration in the gravitational eld of the sun. What does this mean? In the immediate vicinity of a freely falling observer, there is no gravitational eld, as far as the observer is concerned. If you are in a freely falling lift, all your experiments will give you identical results that you would have got in a at space-time. If you put a ball at some height above your head, it will remain there, as dictated by Newtons rst law. Of course, an observer on the ground will explain this dierently he will say that both you and the ball are falling with the same acceleration g, and so the relative distance remains xed (I am assuming that the value of g remains constant over the laboratory, which I can safely do, since it is only an innitesimal portion of a curved space-time that has a at metric). This is a central idea in Einsteins theory of gravity, so let us rst see how it came about. Newtons second law says that the applied force is proportional to the acceleration, and let us call the proportionality constant the inertial mass mi of the body. In a gravitational eld, the force on a body is proportional to the acceleration due to gravity. This proportionality constant will be called the gravitational mass mg of the body. Now mi is an intrinsic property of the body; it may depend on a lot of things, like chemical composition. On the other hand, mg is dependent on gravitational force. One may expect that the ratio mi /mg need not be equal for all bodies. If that 7
m m
iA
fv
iB
fv
m m g
iB
fh m
gB
iA
fh
gA
Figure 1: The E otv os experiment. be the case, bodies with dierent composition, dropped from the same height, should not reach the ground simultaneously. Are mi and mg the same for all bodies 3 ? A precise experiment to settle this question was done by the Hungarian baron Roland von E otv os, which we briey describe. Consider g. 1, which shows a bar loaded with two dierent bodies A and B . It is supported somewhere in the middle by a wire, with a plane mirror attached to it to detect any possible rotation of the wire (how?). The bar need not be horizontal. The gravitational force acts downwards towards the centre of the earth. There is also an upward force provided by the centripetal acceleration due to the earths rotation. Budapest, where the experiment was performed, is not on the equator it is at about 46 north latitude so the centripetal acceleration has both vertical and horizontal components (it is in the plane of the latitude). The downward force is proportional to mg but the upward force is proportional to mi , so at equilibrium, lA (mgA g miA fv ) = lB (mgB g miB fv ) . (14)
(Can you show, in g. 1, lA and lB ?) There is, of course, a horizontal component fh of the centripetal accceleration. The horizontal force may be unequal, so it will produce a torque given by the dierence of the two moments: T = lA miA fh lB miB fh . Eliminating lB , one gets T = lA miA fh 1 or, since fv g, T = lA fh mgA
3
(15)
mgA g fv miA
mgB g fv miB
(16)
miB miA . mgA mgB
(17)
What one expects is a constant ratio. If it is something other than unity, we can scale the force with it.
If the ratio mi /mg is dierent for A and B , there should be a resultant torque. How do we know whether such a torque is actually there, since we cannot stop the earths rotation by the ip of a switch? The way out is to rotate the whole experiment by 180 . This keeps everything in the vertical direction invariant, but reverses the torque. It is easy to measure whether there is a net rotation of the wire in these two setups. The answer, to a very good precision, is no. This tells you that mi = mg for all bodies. Dening =
mgB mgA miA miB mgB 1 mgA 2 miA + miB
(18)
the latest experiment obtains = (0.2 2.8) 1012 ; thus, the equality of the gravitational mass and the inertial mass is one of the most accurate relationships in physics. This is from a laboratory experiment; the lunar laser ranging test, which compares the falling rate of the earth and the moon, improves the number to 1.5 1013 .
2.2
The equivalence principle
Suppose there is a system of n particles, moving with nonrelativistic velocities under the inuence of forces F(xn xm ) and an external uniform gravitational eld g. The equations of motion are mn d2 xn = mn g + dt2
m
F(xn xm )
(19)
which, seen from another coordinate frame falling with the same velocity 1 x = x gt2 , 2 would look like mn d2 x n = dt2 t = t, (20)
F(x n xm ).
(21)
So the original observer, using the unprimed coordinates, and his freely falling friend, using the primed coordinates, will have the same laws of motion, except that the former sees a gravitational eld and the latter does not. This is what we have qualitatively stressed in the earlier subsection. But there is a catch: the deduction assumes g to be uniform. The gravitational eld need not be homogeneous (look at the tides); if the freely falling laboratory is big enough, the radial distance between the particles will gradually decrease as they fall. However, we can always have a at space-time in an innitesimal region, so we can say, without any problem, Experiments in a suciently small freely falling laboratory, over a suciently short time, give results that are identical to those obtained from the same experiments in an inertial frame in empty space. This is the equivalence principle. What experiments, or in other words, what physical laws are we talking about? All the laws of nature Newtons laws of motion, or special relativity if the velocity is relativistic, Maxwells electrodynamics, or any other laws you can think about. The last phrase, an inertial frame in empty space, evidently refers to at space-time. We are not discriminating here between the weak equivalence principle, which includes only the laws for freely falling particles (eqs. (19) and (21)), and the strong equivalence principle, which includes all laws. Since the mass of a body includes the electromagnetic binding energy, and also the strong binding energy for the nucleons, it is expected that these two energies also obey the
equivalence principle 4 . In a gravitational eld, everything falls with the same accceleration so a light ray passing near the sun will bend towards the sun. For a light ray grazing the sun, the bending would be 1.75 . Einstein claimed such a bending to be a crucial test for GTR, and it was vindicated in the 1919 eclipse experiments.
2.3
Free fall
Consider a particle moving freely under the inuence of gravitational forces. According to the equivalence principle, there is a locally at freely falling coordinate system in which the equation of motion is that of a straight line in space-time, i.e., d2 =0 d 2 where d , the proper time, is given by d 2 = d d = ds2 . (23) (22)
Now suppose that we use any other coordinate system x , which can be cartesian or curvilinear, xed or moving in the laboratory frame, even rotating or accelerating. s are functions of x s (and vice versa), so we can write eq. (22) as 0= d d dx x d = 2 dx dx d2 x . + x d 2 x x d d (24)
Multiplying this by x / and using x = , x we get the equation of motion

d2 x dx dx = 0, + d 2 d d where the ane connection or the Christoel symbol is dened as
(25)
(26)
x 2 . x x
(27)
Eq. (26) is the analogue of force-free motion in a gravitational eld; this is called a geodesic equation and the trajectory of the particle is called the geodesic. For a at space-time, the geodesic is a straight line. One can formulate a variational principle analogous to that in nonrelativistic classical mechanics: The motion of a test particle 5 between two timelike separated points extremises the proper time between them. Note that the Christoel symbol is symmetric in its lower indices. However, it can be shown that it is not a mixed tensor of rank 3; the transformation property is dierent. The proper time may be expressed, using eq. (13) , as d 2 =
4
dx dx = g dx dx . x x
(28)
What about the gravitational energy itself? The energy is so tiny that such an equivalence is extremely dicult to detect, but hopefully it is also in the ambit of the principle, since the applicability of the equivalence principle to gravity is a crucial step to Einsteins equations of GTR. 5 So that it does not aect the gravitational eld.
10
For a photon, one cannot use , since d 2 is zero (the separation of two points on the surface of a light cone is always zero). We have to use some other parameter, say 0 , which is equally good (such parameters are called ane parameters). We replace the standard equations by d2 d d dx dx = 0 , = g = 0, d 2 d d d d and eq. (26) as
d2 x dx dx . + d 2 d d
(29)
(30)
Q. Show that for a force-free motion in at 2-dimensional space, the geodesics are straight lines. Q. Show that 2 = . (31) x x x (This is nothing but an exercise to check that you know how to handle the Lorentz indices!) Q. Show that the time dt for a photon to travel a distance dx is determined by g00 dt2 + 2g0i dxi dt + gij dxi dxj = 0. (32)
This is a quadratic equation for dt with two roots. Which one is consistent with the at space-time result?
2.4
Metric and ane connection
Start from eq. (13). Dierentiating with respect to x , we get 2 2 g = + , x x x x x x x which can be written using eq. (31) as
g = + = g + g . x x x x x
(33)
(34)
Add to eq. (34) the same equation with and interchanged, and subtract the same equation with and interchanged. We then have g g g + = g + g + g + g g g . x x x Since g and are both symmetric under the exchange of and , we can write g g g + = 2g . x x x (36) (35)
, and multiply eq. (36) with g . This Dene a matrix g as the inverse of g so that g g = gives a very important relation:
1 g 2
g g g + x x x
(37)
It can be shown that all the eects of gravity are contained in the metric g and the ane connection , and given the metric, we can use eq. (37) to obtain the ane connections. We will now see some examples. Example 1: Flat space-time, cartesian coordinates = diag(1, 1, 1, 1). All In the cartesian system, we can write ds2 = dt2 + dx2 i , so g = g derivatives vanish, and so all Christoel symbols are zero. 11
Example 2: Flat plane polar coordinate The Christoel symbols need not always be zero for at space (or space-time). Consider, for r example, ds2 = dr 2 + r 2 d 2 . Denote r by 1 and by 2, and let us calculate 1 22 = . The metric is diagonal, so we must set = = 1, = = 2, and g22 1 11 1 1 22 = g 2 x = r. (38)
Example 3: Surface of a sphere Following the metric in eq. (5), we see that g11 = 1/a2 , g22 = 1/a2 sin2 , and g12 = g21 = 0. Putting = = 1 and = = 2, we get 1 11 g22 1 1 = 22 = g 2 x 1 = a2 .2a2 sin cos = sin cos . 2 (39)
Example 4: The Schwarzschild metric This is one of the more interesting cases that we will discuss. The geometry has a spherical symmetry, and is the relevant one for the space-time outside a spherical mass distribution (e.g., a star). The metric is time independent; the geometry does not change with time. The spherical symmetry argument ensures that in spherical polar coordinate for the spatial part, the - sector can be written as r 2 d 2 + r 2 sin2 d2 . The time-independence means that g00 and g11 can be functions of the radial coordinate r only. We write ds2 = 1 2GM r dt2 + 1 2GM r
1
dr 2 + r 2 d 2 + r 2 sin2 d2 ,
(40)
where M is the mass of the gravitating body, and G is Newtons gravitational constant 6 . Since g is diagonal, so is g , and its elements can be obtained by dividing unity with the corresponding 1 element of g . For diagonal metrics, must be equal to . Let us try to nd r rr = 11 , so that = = = = 1: r rr = = 1 11 g 2 g11 g11 g11 + 1 1 x x x1
2GM 2
= 1
1 11 g11 g 2 x1
2
2GM 1 1 2 r
2GM r
1 GM . 2 r 1 2GM r
(41)
Before we move on to the next example, note that something interesting seems to happen for r = 0 and r = 2GM (if c = 1, for r = 2GM/c2 ). We will come to this later. Example 5: The Friedmann-Robertson-Walker (FRW) metric Suppose the metric is not constant in time; the coordinate grid expands with time. Such coordinates are called comoving coordinates. Consider a 2-dimensional rectangular grid that expands with time. Two points at (x1 , y1 ) and (x2 , y2 ) will always maintain a constant coordinate distance, but the physical distance between them increases. Such a metric is relevant for us since this is what the metric of the universe should look like we all know, from the days of Edwin Hubble, that the universe expands. Let us use a metric ds2 = dt2 + a2 (t)
6
1 dr 2 + r 2 d 2 + r 2 sin2 d2 , 1 kr 2
(42)
Some texts, like Hartle, relate mass with length and time by putting G = 1. While this is a perfectly valid procedure, this makes me a little uncomfortable, since I am accustomed to use h = 1. Gravity is classical, so general relativists do not need h except people like Stephen Hawking but we will keep both G and h , and treat mass dierently from length and time, which are related by c = 1.
12
where a(t) is called the scale factor. The constant k can be 0, 1, or 1, for at, closed and open universes respectively. We have every reason to believe that we are in the k = 0 universe. Again, the metric is diagonal, so let us quickly work out a few ane connections.
0 0 t = 33 : ( = = 0, = = 3) 33 = 0 0 t rr = 11 : ( = = 0, = = 1) 11 1 1 r tr = 01 : ( = = 1, = 1, = 0) 01
g33 1 00 g 0 = aar 2 sin2 , 2 x 1 aa g11 = g00 0 = , 2 x 1 kr 2 g11 1 a = g11 0 = . 2 x a
(43)
(Here, a = da(t)/dt.)
Q. Find, if any, the nonzero ane connections of a 2-dimensional spherical geometry, other than that in eq. (39). Q. Show that for the Schwarzschild geometry, one gets the following nonzero Christoel symbols:
r t tr = rr =
GM r2
2GM r
, r tt =
GM r2
2GM r
, r = (r 2GM ), (44)
1 2 r = (r 2GM ) sin , r = r = , = cos sin , = cot . r
Q. Repeat the same problem for the FRW metric. Note that a Christoel symbol is trivially zero, for a diagonal metric, if all its indices are dierent. Also, it must be symmetric in its lower indices. Write down all possible independent nonzero combinations. It turns out that 13 of them are nonzero. Three of these 13 have been worked out in eq. (43). Get the rest 10. Look at Appendix B, p. 547, of Hartle, if you get stuck.
2.5
Weak gravity: the Newtonian limit
Suppose the motion of a particle is non-relativistic, so that |dx/d | dt/d (remember c = 1). This simplies the geodesic equation (26) to d2 x dt + 00 2 d d
2
= 0.
(45)
We assume the gravitational eld to be stationary, so that all time derivatives of g vanish: 1 g00 . 00 = g 2 x Since the eld is weak, we can assume the metric to be almost cartesian: g = + h , so that |h | 1, (47) (46)
1 h00 . 00 = 2 x Suppose = i, a spatial index. The Minkowski metric forces = i. So we can write d2 xi 1 d 2 2 dt d
2
(48)
i h00 = 0,
d2 t = 0. d 2
(49)
The second equation, which follows from 0 00 = 0 as the metric is time-independent, implies dt/d = constant. Dividing by (dt/d )2 , we get 1 d2 xi = i h00 . 2 dt 2 13 (50)
Compare this with the corresponding Newtons equation, d2 xi = i dt2 (51)
where is the gravitational potential. At a distance r from a spherical mass distribution with total mass M , it is = GM/r . We can write h00 = 2 + constant. (52)
The value of is indeed small. On the surface of a proton, it is of the order of 1039 , so particle physics can safely neglect gravity; it is of the order of 109 , 106 and 104 respectively on the surfaces of the earth, the sun, and a typical white dwarf star. Q. From dimensional analysis, show that SI /c2 gives our . Q. What is the value of G in the c = 1 system? If the mass and the radius of the sun are 2 1030 kg and 0.7 109 m respectively, calculate on the surface of the sun.
If we expect the eect of gravity to die down at innity so that at innity, g = , h00 must be zero at r = . This gives h00 = 2, g00 = (1 + 2). (53)
2.6
Gravitational redshift: Apparent weight of photons
Einstein suggested three tests for GTR. Among them, the bending of light by sun, or other gravitating bodies, has been well studied. In fact, we now know that light from very distant sources can bend while passing through an intermediate galaxy; this eect is called gravitational lensing. The second test, the perihelion shift of mercury, yielded results that are consistent with GTR. There have been other tests, that were not even discussed (or thought of) by Einstein, which vindicated his theory. However, the third test that Einstein thought of, turned out not to be a test of GTR but of a far more general principle the equivalence principle that we have just studied. Remember that there can be many theories of gravity embedded in a curved space-time that satisfy the equivalence principle; the Princeton astrophysicist Robert Dicke and his student Carl Brans gave such a theory that was popular in the 1960s and 70s. All these theories will pass this test, known as the gravitational redshift. Think of a tall tower. Suppose there is a clock at the top and another at the bottom of the tower; will they keep identical time? In other words, will they send o same number of beeps per second? The clocks are not moving, so there is no question of time dilation. Let us think it in another way. Suppose an atom at the top of the tower is emitting electromagnetic radiation with a frequency . This is nothing but a clock that ticks times per second. Will the frequency still be when a detector detects the radiation at the bottom of the tower? The answer lies in the equivalence principle. Consider an observer falling freely from the top of the tower, and when he passes the source, the radiation is emitted. Equivalence principle tells us that in the frame of the observer, there is no gravity; the space-time is at, and all postulates of special relativity are satised. So, to the observer, the radiation still has the frequency . But to him the detector on the ground is coming up, and so it will catch more number of crests of the radiation per second than if it were sitting still. This is analogous to the well-known Doppler eect; the detected frequency d will be more than , hence the radiation will be blue-shifted. If the emitter is placed on the ground and the detector is at the top of the tower, a freely falling observer will see the detector receding, and hence the radiation will be red-shifted. Whichever way the shift is, the phenomenon is known as the gravitational redshift. Let us just state the relevant formula without deducing (see Hartle for the deduction; Weinberg provides a 14
more rigorous one): e d , (54) c2 where e (d ) is the gravitational potential at the position of the emitter (detector). Note that we have introduced the factor of c; this is because in a laboratory experiment, e d is measured in conventional units. Both e and d are negative, but if the emitter is above the detector, |e | < |d |; hence in eq. (54) the quantity in bracket is positive and the frequency is blue-shifted. If the height dierence is h, e d = gh. d = 1 + In 1960, Pound and Rebka published a paper in Physical Review Letters with the enigmatic title Apparent weight of photons; what they actually did was to measure the gravitational redshift. They used the 22.5 m high tower of the Jeerson Physical Laboratory at Harvard University. The signal was the 14.4 keV -ray emitted in the decay of the unstable F e57 nucleus. The detector, at the bottom, was again some F e57 , which is expected to absorb these -rays (at least, the small fraction that reaches them) by the opposite reaction. If the frequency is shifted, the absorption will not take place with the same eciency. The source was moved upwards slowly, with a constant velocity, so that there is a Doppler redshift superposed on the gravitational blueshift. One can change the Doppler shift by varying the velocity of the source, and monitor the absorption eciency; the eciency peaks where the emitted frequency is the same as the absorbed one, and hence the Doppler shift (which is calculable) gives the gravitational blueshift. The experiment was not an easy one. The potential dierence, gh, divided by c2 , gives a number of the order of 1015 . The width of the -ray is order of magnitudes larger than this. There are several reasons for this. First, the nucleus has an inherent motion. Second, the nucleus recoils uncontrollably after the emission of the -ray. Both these eects can be taken care of by locking the emitter nucleus in a crystal lattice, so that the motion is minimised and the recoil is absorbed by the whole lattice (this is known as the M ossbauer eect). Pound and Rebka also interchanged the positions of the emitter and the absorber to eliminate some systematic errors, and nally conrmed the prediction for the gravitational redshift within 1%. Q. Heartbeat is just like a clock, and if the heart beats faster, the person ages more quickly. GGs oce is approximately 20 m higher than DJs. Who will age more quickly, and how much?
The Schwarzschild Metric
The Schwarzschild metric is given in eq. (40): 2GM 1 2 2GM dr + r 2 d 2 + r 2 sin2 d2 . (55) dt2 + 1 r r It is independent of t and has a spatial spherical symmetry, as is evident from its polar coordinates. How do I get this metric? Indeed, it is a very nontrivial job to deduce the metric from the eld equation of gravity, called the Einstein equation, which we will discuss later. One can impose the symmetry conditions and get a general form of the metric. For example, one may deduce that gtt and grr will be functions of r only. What one generally does is to check that the metric is indeed a solution of the Einstein equation. We will later see that the Schwarzschild geometry is a solution for the Einstein equation in the absence of any matter or energy (i.e., vacuum). Such a vacuum solution is acceptable for the geometry outside a spherical mass, but not for the geometry inside it. ds2 = 1 Remember that the Schwarzschild coordinate r is not the distance from any centre. Rather, it is related to the area A of two-dimensional spheres with xed r and t by A = 4r 2 . If GM/r is small, one can write 2GM 2GM dt2 + 1 + dr 2 + r 2 d 2 + r 2 sin2 d2 . (56) ds2 1 r r 15
This is just the Newtonian static weak eld metric (compare gtt = g00 with that of eq. (53)) with the gravitational potential = GM/r , so we can identify M with the total mass of the source of curvature, or approximately just the total mass of the gravitating body (approximately, because the gravitational energy of the body also contributes to the source of curvature, but we may safely neglect such subtleties). The metric apparently has singularities at r = 0 and r = 2GM . The latter in c = 1 units r = 2GM/c2 is called the Schwarzschild radius Rs and is the characteristic length scale for curvature of the metric, just as the radius of a sphere is the characteristic length scale for its curvature. However, there is no astronomical body for which Rs lies outside the body. For example, the sun has Rs = 2GM /c2 3 km, well inside the interior of the sun, where the vacuum solution is simply not valid!
Even if we have a body whose radius is less than its Rs , we do not expect to see any singularity. This is because the singularity is only apparent, an artifact of the choice of the metric, as Eddington correctly pointed out, and we can go to some other coordinate system where the singularity is absent. We can also calculate the intrinsic properties of the space-time the curvature quantities, and none of them shows any singularity! On the other hand, r = 0 is a genuine singularity; curvatures become innite. In GTR we meet such singularities in a number of places. Most notable among them is the singularity at the origin of the universe, the so-called Big Bang at time t = 0, whose possible resolution may lie only in a quantum theory of gravity. For now, we must live with the singularity and the question of what happened at t = 0 is simply not well-dened.
3.1
Black holes
A star shines by hydrogen burning. It is in a state of dynamic equilibrium, between an outward radiation pressure and an inward gravitational pressure. When the hydrogen runs out, the star starts to collapse under gravitation. This ignites the helium that has been formed in the core, and the star again reaches another equilibrium. This process can continue till the core contains only Fe56 , which cannot be further ignited (can you say why?). Thus, no more nuclear fusion is possible which may resist the gravitational collapse. The collapsing star, however, may be kept in equilibrium by a nonthermal source of pressure. One common example is the Fermi pressure that builds up because the electrons, loosely speaking, repel each other as a consequence of Fermi statistics. A star which is held in equilibrium by the electron Fermi pressure is known as a white dwarf star. Its typical radius is a few thousand kilometres, and its maximum mass can be about 1.4 times the solar mass. This is known as the Chandrasekhar limit. Thus, if the electron Fermi pressure is to keep a star in balance, its maximum mass can only be about 1.4M . A more massive star undergoes further compression the electron Fermi pressure is not enough to resist the gravitational collapse. In such a star, protons and electrons combine to form neutrons (and neutrinos, which escape). Such stars are called neutron stars, and they are highly interesting objects. The typical radius of a neutron star is about 10 km, and it generally rotates very rapidly about its axis (which is just conservation of angular momentum; if radius goes down by a factor of 105 , the angular velocity increases by 1010 if no mass is lost). The maximum mass of a neutron star is about 0.7 solar mass (so some mass is shed when the star collapses beyond the white dwarf stage). In other words, a star can reach a nonthermal equilibrium if its mass is not greater than, say, 3M , taking into account all the uncertainties in such calculations (this is known as the Tolman-Oppenheimer-Volko limit). But there are a lot of stars in the sky which are more massive than this. Some of them shed a large fraction of their mass by violent explosion. But there must be some stars which have run out of nuclear fuel, while the mass is still greater than 3M . What happens to them?
16
The answer is that they are in a state of ongoing gravitational collapse. The radius of such a star shrinks quickly, goes below the Schwarzschild radius Rs = 2GM , and ultimately goes on to hit the r = 0 singularity. What happens at the singularity? Nobody knows. Let us see why. We know that light rays bend in a curved space-time. In particular, it is not very dicult to calculate the bending for a Schwarzschild geometry. For a light ray grazing the sun, it is 1.75 arcsecond. The geometry is much more violently curved near a body whose radius is close to Rs (remember that Rs = 3 km for sun and about 9 mm for earth). Light rays emitted from the surface of such a collapsing star bend, but can escape the star and come to us as long as the radius is greater than Rs . When the radius is below Rs , the light rays get permanently trapped the bending is so large that emitted rays fall back on the star, nothing comes out, and there is no way to obtain any information about the star except to observe its nearby geometry. Such a body is called a black hole, and the radius Rs is known as the event horizon.
The light ray emitted at r = Rs does not fall back on the star, neither does it come to us it goes around the star like a satellite. What should one see from outside? In a very short period of time typically 105 s the collapse of a star slows down, the emitted light gets more and more red-shifted until the red shift reaches innity, the star grows dark, and the geometry outside becomes indistinguishable from a Schwarzschild geometry. All history of the star will be erased; a Schwarzschild black hole is characterised only by its mass M . This is true only for a static charge-neutral black hole. Apart from mass, a black hole can have a nonzero angular momentum; such a rotating object is known as a Kerr black hole. It can also be charged (a Reissner-N ordstrom black hole), but that is all for a classical black hole. To any outside observer, it is completely specied by its mass, angular momentum, and charge. No other information that passes through the unidirectional event horizon can ever be restored; this is cheekily referred as a no hair theorem. Are there such black holes in our galaxy? We have preliminary evidence for some. If an ordinary star is near a black hole, the matter from the star gets sucked up by the black hole, and the falling matter emits X-rays, which is an indirect signal of such a black hole. We have evidence for some such X-ray signals. There may be a very massive black hole (about 4 million solar mass) at the centre of our galaxy, in the direction of the constellation sagittarius. Some stars die with a violent explosion called supernova, the remnant of such a supernova may be a neutron star, or even a black hole.
3.2
Black holes are not forever
Black holes suck everything that comes below Rs . So one expects its mass to increase forever. According to the no hair theorem, it should be completely specied by its mass, charge, and angular momentum. What about the entropy? If we assume the entropy to be zero, like a classical particle, we will be in trouble; suppose some system with a high entropy passes the event horizon and becomes a part of the black hole, so the entropy of the universe goes down, in contradiction to the second law of thermodynamics. Thus, it is necessary to think about a nonzero entropy for a black hole. Bekenstein and Hawking showed that the entropy is proportional to the area of the black hole, and the area always increases for allowed physical processes, so there is no problem with the second law. However, it may lose mass through a quantum eld theoretic process called Hawking radiation; the radiation follows a perfect black-body pattern, so it is meaningful to talk about the temperature of the black hole, which comes as the fourth parameter to specify such an object. Ultimately the black hole will evaporate, but the lifetime is extremely large: bh = 8.3 1026 Mbh 1 gm
3
s,
(57)
17
so that there is not much chance for us to see an evaporating black hole. In fact, given that the universe is about 13.7 billion years old, only small black holes of mass 1014 g formed at the time of the big bang (they are called primordial black holes) are evaporating now. It is very dicult to have direct evidence of a black hole. However, one may produce very small black holes in the laboratory. These black holes are not exactly like the ones we have discussed, but since they are very tiny, they decay through Hawking radiation almost as soon as they are produced. People have studied the possibility of production and decay of such tiny black holes in the upcoming Large Hadron Collider.
The Einstein Equation

Curvature
4.1
We will state a few results of dierential geometry, without any deduction. You may look at Weinberg for more complete discussion, but be careful his convention is not the same as ours (go to the end of the subsection to see where the dierence lies). In 4-dimensional space-time, the measure of the curvature, the Riemann-Christoel curvature tensor, is dened as + (58) R = . x x One can lower the rst index and have the so-called Riemann curvature: R = g R . It can be shown that R = 1 2 2 g 2 g 2 g 2 g + x x x x x x x x
+ g .
(59)
(60)
In a locally inertial frame at space-time coordinate x = X , we can choose g (x = X ) = . We can also choose the rst derivatives of the metric g /x to vanish at x = X , so that the dierence between g and starts from (x X )2 . This means that the Christoel symbols vanish at x = X (but not their derivatives!), and one can simplify eq. (60) as R = 1 2 2 g 2 g 2 g 2 g + x x x x x x x x . (61)
The curvature quantities are easily calculated from eq. (60). Note that the curvature tensor satises: (a) Symmetry : R = R , (b) Antisymmetry : R = R = R = R , (c) Cyclicity : R + R + R = 0. (62)
The Riemann curvature has 44 = 256 components, but the constraints in (62) reduce it to only 20. This is the number of independent curvature quantities in four dimension; for N dimensions it is N 2 (N 2 1)/12 7 . One can contract two of the indices of the Riemann curvature to form the rank-2 Ricci tensor: R = g R .
7
(63)
So for N = 2, there is only one curvature, the Gaussian curvature in 2-dimensional curved space. For N = 1, there is no curvature, so a curved line has zero curvature! This is not surprising, as a curved line can be continuously deformed to get a straight line they are topologically equivalent; but a curved surface cannot be attened without causing major deformation, look at the Mercator projection of the globe and the distance between the latitude lines.
18
(What happens if we contract R with g ? It gives zero, from the antisymmetry property of eq. (62)). Note that R is a symmetric tensor (the symmetry property between the rst and the third index of R ), so it has 10 independent components. However, there are 4 constraint conditions that must be obeyed by R , and hence R . These are known as Bianchi identities and reduce the number of independent components of the Ricci tensor to six. The Ricci tensor can also be written as R = + , x x (64)
where the summation convention (over and ) is implied. One can further go down, and construct the Ricci scalar, also known as the scalar curvature:
R = g R . A combination of R and R is known as the Einstein curvature: 1 G = R g R. 2
(65)
(66)
Now a note of caution: The denitions for the Riemann-Christoel curvature tensor, and the Riemann curvature, dier from text to text. We have followed the notation of Hartle and Dodelson. Weinberg uses an opposite denition, so in his case eqs. (58), (60), and (61) all contain a relative minus sign compared to our convention. This does not aect the denitions (63) and (66), and eq. (62) is also unaected. However, be careful when you deduce the curvature quantities from the metric. Also, Einstein equation in presence of matter, which contains G on the left-hand side, looks dierent; the one in Weinberg contains a minus sign on the right-hand side. Q. Deduce the properties of the Riemann curvature as given in eq. (62). Q. Contract eq. (66) with g . What is the value of g g ? Hence get R in terms of G and g .
4.2
Einstein equation in vacuum

R = 0. (67)
Einstein equation in vacuum is given by This is analogous to the Newtons gravitational equation in vacuum: 2 = 0. Einstein equation (it is actually a set of 6 independent equations, written in a compact notation, just like F = ma, which is a set of 3 equations) is a rst principle, it cannot be deduced, since there is no more fundamental principle from which one can deduce it. Of course, one must be sure that at the proper limit (nonrelativistic, static, weak eld) it reduces to the Newtons law. Let us check that the Schwarzschild metric indeed satises (67). First calculate the RiemannChristoel curvatures using eqs. (41) and (58). For Rt rtr = R0 101 , we put = = 0, = = 1, and the nonzero terms are R0 101 = = so R0101 = g00 R0 101 = 19 1 GM 1 0 0 + 0 01 11 10 10 r r 2 1 2GM/r 2GM 1 , 3 r 1 2GM/r 2GM . r3
(68)
(69)
Similarly, one gets (do this, at least once in your lifetime) R = 2GM r sin2 , 2GM GM , Rtt = 1 r r 2GM GM Rtt = 1 sin2 , r r 1 GM , Rrr = r 1 2GM/r GM 1 Rrr = sin2 . r 1 2GM/r
(70)
The other nonzero components of the curvature follow from symmetry arguments, eq. (62). Now calculate the Ricci tensor R . All components with = are identically zero. The diagonal components also vanish, as can be seen from, say, R00 = g R00 = g11 R0101 + g22 R0202 + g33 R0303 = 0. Q. Check that R11 is also zero. Note that R1010 is related to R0101 . Q. Show that Rtrtt = 0 without direct computation. Q. Show that R = 0 is equivalent to G = 0. (71)
4.3
Einstein equation for matter: the FRW geometry
The universe is not empty. It is homogeneous and isotropic. It contains matter and radiation; the matter is in the form of the visible matter like electrons, protons, atoms and molecules and objects built out of them, and some matter which we can detect only by its gravitational presence. In fact, most of the matter in the universe is in the form of such dark matter; nobody knows what constitutes the dark matter, but it is hoped that an answer will soon be available from the high energy physics experiment at the LHC. The radiation covers the entire electromagnetic spectrum, but most of it is in the form of an almost isotropic blackbody radiation with a temperature of 2.725 0.001 K. This falls in the microwave region, so it is called the cosmic microwave background, and is supposed to be a remnant of the big bang. The universe also expands. It expands uniformly, all galaxies recede from all other galaxies, and there is no centre of expansion. Whether it will expand forever or stop expanding and then start contracting depends on the matter and energy density of the universe 8 . We have reasons to believe that it will go on expanding. The velocity with which a galaxy moves away from us is directly proportional to its distance: v = H0 d (72) where the proportionality constant H0 , known as Hubbles constant, is about (70.4 1.3) (km/s)/Mpc (from a combined analysis of the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP) and other data, averaged in 2010). Megaparsec (Mpc) is a measure of distance in cosmology; 1 parsec is about 3.26 light-year and a megaparsec is a million parsecs. So, if a galaxy is 1 Mpc away from us, it recedes roughly with a velocity of 70.4 km/s. The spectral lines will be correspondingly red-shifted (this is Doppler shift, not gravitational).
It has recently been observed that the expansion rate actually is increasing, albeit very slowly, with time. This is against all our known concepts of standard astrophysics. The energy responsible for such accelerated expansion is called dark energy, and is distinct from dark matter. Almost 95% of the matter-energy density of the universe is believed to be dark 22.7% in dark matter, 72.8% in dark energy, and only 4.5% as visible matter and radiation. What constitutes dark energy is an open and challenging question.
8
20
The expansion forces us to use a comoving coordinate to describe the geometry of the universe. We are familiar with the FRW geometry; the scale factor a(t) in the metric describes the expansion of the grid. The velocity is radial, so we can write v= | |r r, |r| (73)
but r = ax, where r and x denote the physical and the comoving coordinates respectively. The velocity is entirely 9 due to the expansion of the grid, so x is constant, and we can write v= where a r = H (t)r , a a . a (74)
H (t) = Its present value is denoted by H0 .
(75)
We just state the form of Einstein equation in the presence of matter (this includes radiation): G = 8GT . (76)
We have encountered the Einstein curvature G in eq. (66). G is the Newtons gravitational constant, and T is the stress-energy tensor. T00 gives the energy density, Ti0 the momentum density. T0i the energy ux and Tij the usual stress tensor. The exact composition depends on what matter we take in our calculation. T is conserved in at space-time. In the presence of gravitation, its conservation is a little bit more complicated, because the gravitational self-energy also contributes to it. However, there are four constraint equations, which reduce to T = 0 in at space-time. Since T is symmetric, this again tells us that the number of independent equations in (76) is six. How do we get the factor of 8G? Poissons equation for Newtonian potential can be written as 2 = 4G and in the weak-gravity limit, g00 (1 + 2), so one can write 2 g00 = 8GT00 . (78) (77)
Though this is true only for a non-relativistic distribution of matter in the weak gravity limit, and is not even Lorentz invariant, the factor acted as the root of Einsteins guess about his equation. It is basically a consistency check: in the Newtonian limit, one must get back eq. (77). A brief digression here. When Einstein rst formulated his eld equations, the expansion of the universe was not known, so Einstein tried a static solution (something like the FRW metric with a constant in time). This clearly led to an inconsistency; we will later see why. To circumvent that, Einstein introduced another term in his eld equation, G + g = 8GT , (79)
and this led to a consistent solution. The constant was called the cosmological constant. When the expansion was discovered, it was found that there is a consistent solution without , and Einstein subsequently discarded it, calling it his biggest blunder. However, during the last thirteen years, the cosmological constant has made a comeback, almost with a vengeance, and we have enough reasons to believe that there is indeed a nonzero . More on this later.
9
Almost. There can be some individual motions, but they are negligible on the average.
21
As a nal exercise to this course, we would like to calculate the Einstein curvature components for the FRW geometry. There are two ways to do this. The rst one is to calculate the Riemann curvatures rst, following eq. (58). This we have done for the Schwarzschild metric. The second way is to use directly eq. (64). However, if you are not comfortable with the double summation, go through the rst route. It takes more time, but it is probably safer for a beginner. Ill use the second route. Use (64) and keep track of the nonzero Christoel symbols, eq. (43). If you are careful with the double summation, and remember that the Christoel symbols are symmetric in their lower indices, the only nonzero terms are R00 = 1 1 1 01 02 03 1 2 2 3 3 1 01 01 02 02 03 03 0 2 x x x3 3a a a 2 = = 3 , 3 t a a a 1 0 1 2 3 0 11 10 11 12 13 11 + = x0 x1 x1 x1 x1 x1 0 2 0 3 0 1 1 2 1 3 1 +1 01 11 + 02 11 + 03 11 + 11 11 + 12 11 + 13 11
R11
R22
1 1 0 1 1 2 2 3 3 0 11 10 01 11 11 11 21 12 31 13 aa + 2a 2 + 2k = , 1 kr 2 0 1 3 22 22 23 1 0 2 0 3 1 1 = + + 0 22 01 + 22 02 + 22 03 + 11 22 x0 x1 x2 1 3 1 0 2 1 2 2 1 2 0 3 3 +2 12 22 + 13 22 22 02 22 12 12 22 02 22 23 03
= r 2 aa + 2a 2 + 2k .
(80)
The calculation of R33 is left as an exercise; the result will be R33 = r 2 sin2 aa + 2a 2 + 2k . The o-diagonal components of R are all zero. The next task is to calculate the scalar curvature R. For that, we need g , which is g = diag 1, (1 kr 2 )a2 , a2 r 2 , a2 r 2 (sin )2 . So 3 6 3 a + 2 aa + 2a 2 + 2k = 2 aa +a 2 + k . a a a This gives us the nonzero components of the Einstein tensor, R = R g = (82) (83) (81)
a 2 + k 1 , G00 = R00 g00 R = 3 2 a2 a 2 + 2aa +k G11 = G22 = G33 = . (84) a2 To solve the Einstein equation, one must know the right-hand side of eq. (76). Assuming the matter to be a perfect isotropic uid (which it is to a very good extent; uid so that the stress tensor is diagonal, and isotropic so that all three elements of the stress tensor are equal), one may write T = 8G diag(, p, p, p)
2
(85)
where is the density and p is the pressure of the uid. This leads to the Friedmann equations: a a + k a2 = 8G , 3 (86)
1 2aa +a 2 + k a2 22
= 8Gp .
One must now solve eqs. (86) to extract any further information about the evolution of the universe. That is done in the Cosmology section of this note. Before we close this section, consider the case for a static universe lled with matter. By this term we mean non-relativistic matter, with p = 0, but a nite . If a is constant, we have G00 = 8GT00 G11 = 8GT11 k 8G = , a2 3 k = 0, a2
(87)
which is clearly inconsistent; a static universe can at best be empty.
Newtonian Cosmology
While it is true that a proper study of cosmology requires a knowledge of GTR, at least at the level discussed here, one can formulate cosmology even without GTR. A good example is Newtonian cosmology. Consider the space to be isotropic and homogeneous. Consider a test particle of mass m, just 4 outside a uniform spherical mass distribution, of radius r and density , so that M = 3 r 3 . Newtons law of gravity gives GM (88) r = 2 . r Multiplying both sides by 2r , we get d d r 2 = 2GM dt dt Thus, r 2 1 r . (89)
2GM = A, (90) r where A is a constant whose value can be xed by the initial condition: at t = 0, r = r (0), r =r (0). Note that 2GM/r is just the escape velocity squared and depending on the value of r , A can be 1 1 positive, negative, or zero, giving dierent conic orbits. Also note that 2 Am = 2 mr 2 GM m/r is 3 the total energy Em of the particle. Putting M = 4 3 r , we get r r
2
A 2Em 8 8 . = G + 2 = G + 3 r 3 mr 2
(91)
This is where Newton stopped because he did not have Hubbles data on expanding universe. Now that we know that the universe expands, let us conjecture that there was some explosion at t = 0 (remember, in Newtonian cosmology, space and time are dierent entities), and the test particle is ying out as a result of that explosion. Thus we may put r (t) = a(t)x, where x is some constant that does not depend on time, and a(t) is the scale factor. This gives a a
2
8 2Em G + . 3 ma2 x2
(92)
Now put 2Em /mx2 = k (or kc2 in the SI system) where k can be positive, negative, or zero. This gives you the Friedmann equation: H2 = a a
2
k 8 = G 2 . 3 a
(93)
Everything else follows. However, note that 23
In GTR, the space-time fabric expands, whereas in Newtonian case, the particle ies away. This is analogous to the active and passive viewpoints of transformation. t = 0 is a singularity in GTR; it is not so in Newtonian cosmology. It is the time when the explosion took place. What happened for t < 0? This question is not even dened in big-bang cosmology because of the t = 0 singularity, but this is dened here, but there is no satisfactory answer for that. The major problem is with the idea of a homogeneous and isotropic universe. In such a universe, how can there be a speecic favoured point? It is here that the Newtonian cosmology faces its greatest stumbling block, albeit philosophical.
If the universe is really innite in spatial extent, every test mass must be in equilibrium; all points attract it uniformly. However, the equilibrium is an unstable one; a slight perturbation collapses the conguration and the universe breaks down into a number of massive seeds. This can be taken as the predecessor of the modern-day ideas of galaxy formation.
Modern Cosmology
Cosmology is the study of the universe; from its birth to its present-day structure and composition.
6.1
Microscopic content of the universe
The constituents of the universe, on the microscopic scale, are as follows. Matter: This means non-relativistic matter, also called dust, and characterised by zero pressure: p = 0. This includes all baryons, as they have cooled down and hardly interacts with each other 10 . On a larger scale, this includes stars and galaxies, since the only interaction between them is gravitational. An important quantity is the number density: the average number of particles per unit volume. If the average energy per partcle is , the total energy per unit volume is given by E = n, where n is the number density. Most of the baryons are protons. Free neutrons are unstable, so whatever neutrons are there remain bound inside the atomic nuclei, mostly in He4 . The neutron-proton ratio in the universe is approximately 1:8 (this we will study in more detail later in the Nucleosynthesis section), and the universe is charge neutral, so the number of electrons is approximately equal to the number of protons. Not all baryons are visible (i.e., inside stars). Most of the hydrogen is in the form of interstellar gas. Their presence and density are estimated by the spectral absorption lines when the light from a distant star passes through them. It is estimated that only one out of ve baryons is visible; 80% of the baryonic matter is in the form of such interstellar gas. Radiation: This means electromagnetic radiation, i.e., photons. They can interact with protons and electrons. They can ionise an atom, or just scatter o a free electron (Thomson or Compton scattering). Each photon can have two degrees of freedom, two polarisation states, and occupation number per mode of polarisation is given by N= 1 , exp(h/kT ) 1 (94)
10 Cosmologists include electrons in the list of baryons! After all, if only the gravitational interaction matters, contribution of electrons is negligible compared to the contribution of protons and neutrons.
24
and the energy density in a frequency interval to + d is E d = 8h 3 d . c3 exp(h/kT ) 1 2 k4 4 T , 15( hc)3 (95)
The energy density radiated o a black body is given by E d = (96)
where the constant, sometimes written as , has a numerical value of 7.6 106 Jm3 K4 . Neutrinos: There are three types of neutrinos, and all of them have very tiny masses, so they are extremely relativistic particles. There might be some heavy yet-to-be-discovered neutrinos, but they are nonrelativistic and hence should be treated as matter, or more precisely as dark matter as such neutrinos are unlikely to have any interaction except gravitational. The neutrinos are very weakly interacting, so they are relevant only when the density is very high. The sum of all light neutrino masses is less than 0.58 eV (this comes from a combination of 7-year WMAP and SDSS data). Sometimes, they are included as another component of radiation, however, you must remember that unlike photons, cosmic neutrinos are almost impossible to detect. Dark matter: There is much more matter in the universe that we can see. This invisible matter interacts only gravitationally, and its presence can be inferred from indirect evidences like the rotational motion of the spiral galaxies. A galaxy rotation curve shows the velocity of matter (e.g., a star) rotating in the arms of a spiral galaxy. If a galaxy has mass M (R) within a radius R, then the velocity of the star is given by the balance between the centrifugal force and the inward gravitational pull: GM (R) v2 = . R R2 (97)
For spiral galaxies, most of the visible mass is concentrated in the central hub. So if we go further out in the arms, the enclosed mass is more or less a constant, and the velocity falls o as v 1/ R. Experimentally, the velocity does not fall o anywhere close to this; rather, it becomes almost constant as we increase R. This tells us that there is more matter than the visible one, and their distribution is more like an overall halo over the visible galaxy. The general opinion is that the dark matter is non-relativistic in nature, at least the major component is; this is known as the cold dark matter (CDM) 11 . Dark matter constitutes about 23% of the matter-energy density of the universe where ordinary visible matter gives only 4.5%. There are several ongoing experiments to detect the dark matter directly through their scattering o nuclei. There are also several theoretical models of elementary particles that go beyond the existing Standard Model of particle physics and predict such a dark matter candidate. Again, we hope that the LHC will shed some light towards the direct production of such exotic particles. Dark energy: This is something really exotic and was discovered only in the last thirteen years or so (Riess et al., 1998; Perlmutter et al., 1999). It was found by a study of a number of standard candles for distance measurements, called supernova Ia, that very distant parts of the universe are actually receding from us at a greater velocity than expected, i.e., there appears to be some mechanism causing this acceleration. This is known as the dark energy, and it can be shown that a nonzero cosmological constant can cause such an acceleration.
11 If they were hot, i.e., with relativistic velocity, they would have blown the initial structures apart, and there would not have been any galaxies. There might be some hot dark matter, but only as a tiny fraction of the CDM.
25
There are of course a lot of problems associated with such an explanation, and there are alternative theories. The standard cosmological model with a nonzero and a cold dark matter is often called the CDM model. Q. Derive eq. (96). You may use
0
Also, check that the numerical value of the constant is indeed 7.6 106 Jm3 K4 . Q. The temperature of the cosmic microwave background is 2.725 K. What is the energy density due to this background? Q. Show that the energy density of the neutrinos is expected to be 21 8 times that of the photon. You can use the fact that there are three massless neutrinos and their antineutrinos, each with one degree of freedom (so that a neutrino-antineutrino pair has two degrees of freedom, just like a photon; they are a two-component Weyl spinor). Also use
0
4 y 3 dy = . ey 1 15
(98)
y 3 dy 7 4 = . ey + 1 120
(99)
(As we will see, the actual number is a bit dierent.)
6.2
Macroscopic content of the universe
Stars and galaxies: A galaxy is, in some sense, the smallest unit in cosmological study and is often treated as a point light source. In reality, however, a galaxy typically contains about 1011 stars, where a star can have a typical mass of that of the sun: M 2 1030 kg. A galaxy has a typical radius of tens of kpc. There are spherical or elliptical galaxies, and spiral galaxies (ours is a spiral one). For spiral galaxies, the width is much smaller; maybe less than 1 kpc. We live in one of the spiral arms of the milky way galaxy. There are reasons to believe that the actual width of the galaxy is much larger, consisting of a dark matter halo. The local group: Several of nearby galaxies form the local group. Our nearest galaxy is the Large Magellanic Cloud at about 50 kpc from the sun. Andromeda is another large galaxyof about the same size as the milky way and is about 770 kpc from us. A typical galaxy group takes a volume of a few Mpc3 . Clusters, superclusters, and voids: A number of galactic groups form a cluster of galaxies. This is the largest gravitaionally-collapsed object in the universe and is typically of the dimension of 100 Mpc. A good example is the Coma cluster with about 50000 galaxies. These clusters are joined by lament-like structures of galaxies into superclusters, and between the clusters there can be voids, even as large as of dimension about 50 Mpc. How the structure was formed is one of the open and most interesting questions of cosmology. Large-scale smoothness: Only when one goes above the scale of hundreds of Mpc that the universe appears smooth. (This is not such a big distance; we have observed almost up to half a billion Mpc.) Even the largest scale observations have not revealed anything bigger than clusters and superclusters, scattered all through the universe almost uniformly. This leads to the cosmological principle: the universe is smooth at the largest scale. This is also the justication of the two crucial assumptions: homogeneity, the universe looks same from each point, and isotropy, the universe looks same in all directions 12 .
They are not the same. If the universe has a uniform magnetic eld everywhere, it is homogeneous but not isotropic. If we are at the centre of the universe and the distribution is spherically symmetric, then it is isotropic but not homogeneous. However, if the distribution is isotropic everywhere, it implies homogeneity.
12
26
The cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR): This omnipresent microwave background was discovered accidentally by Penzias and Wilson in 1965, and is one of the most important evidences of the big bang cosmology. CMBR is extremely uniform (which leads again to an evidence of the cosmological principle), and has a blackbody spectrum, peaking at a wavelength that corresponds to a temperature of 2.725 0.001 K. This is commonly known as the temperature of the universe. It was much larger before, and the universe has cooled down since its beginning. CMBR has a very small anisotropy, at about 1 part in 105 , which is believed to be the remnant of some initial perturbation that acted as the seed for galaxy and structure formations. Of course, there are radiations at all bands of the electromagetic spectrum, mostly coming from stars and other stellar objects.
6.3
The uid equation

4 3 3 a .
Consider a uid in a spherical volume of radius a. Its energy is E = thermodynamics, let us write T dS = dE + pdV .
To study the (100)
But the expansion is reversible, so dS = 0. Taking the time derivative of the right-hand side, dV 4 dE +p = 4a2 ( + p)a + a3 = 0, dt dt 3 which leads to the uid equation (101)
a (102) + 3 ( + p) = 0 . a This is not an independent equation. To see this, take the rst equation of eq. (86). Its time derivative gives a 3 ka 4 a a a = 4G ( + p) . (103) 3 = G 2 3 a a a 3 a Cancelling a/a and substituting by the rst equation of (86), we get the second equation of (86).
Q. Work out the intermediate steps. Q. Show that the rst equation of (86) and eq. (103) lead to the acceleration equation a 4G = ( + 3p) . a 3 (104)
Hence convince yourself that the universe will decelerate if + 3p > 0. What is the condition for the universe to expand with a constant velocity? Q. Show that in the presence of a cosmological constant (eq. (79)), we get the following equations: H2 = 8G k 2+ , 3 a 3 a 4G = ( + 3p) + . a 3 3 (105)
6.4
The Hubble parameter revisited
The rst equation of (86) can be written as H2 = 8G k 2. 3 a (106)
First take k = 0, the at universe. The density goes down with time as the volume expands, so H decreases with time. This means that the rate of expansion slows down, but never becomes zero. How it goes depends on how varies with time. As we will see later, if the universe is dominated by either matter or radiation or both, H 1/t. 27
If the universe is open (k < 0), the right-hand side of eq. (106) is positive denite, so the universe goes on expanding. After a long time, becomes suciently small, so the k/a2 term dominates. That means a 2 = |k| = constant, so the universe expands linearly, and the velocity becomes constant. This is also known as free expansion. If the universe is closed (k > 0), H will be zero at a certain time, when the density falls to 3k/8Ga2 . The expansion stops. But the gravitational attraction is still there, and the universe starts collapsing. The collapsing phase is easy to describe, as eq. (106) is symmetric under t t; the collapse is exactly a mirror image of the expansion. The stars and galaxies will start gettng blue-shifted, the temperature will increase, and ultimately the universe will end up in a big crunch, a mirror image of the big bang. 6.4.1 The density parameter
The present-day value of H is known as the Hubble constant H0 (H by itself is obviously not a constant). Sometimes, we introduce a reduced Hubble constant h not to be confused with the Planck constant dened as H0 = 100h km/s/Mpc, so that h = 0.704 0.013 is a dimensionless constant. For the rest of the text, we will use h = 0.7, remembering that there are a lot of quantities which are functions of h, and hence have an uncertainty depending on h. Now, there is a critical density c that makes the universe at, i.e., k = 0, which is given by c (t) = 3H 2 , 8G (107)
where c depends on t as H does so. Putting all the values, this comes out to be (using 1 Mpc = 3.086 1019 km) c (t0 ) = 1.88 1026 h2 kg/m3 = 9.32 1027 kg/m3 == 1.36 1011 M /Mpc3 . (108) The density seems to be tiny but it is not, as there are about 1011 stars in a typical galaxy which is about 1 Mpc across. Thus, the actual density of the universe must be close to the critical density. Of course, we need to measure experimentally to know whether the universe is at, open, or closed. The dimensionless density parameter (t) is dened as (t) = (t) . c (t) (109)
The present value of the density parameter (t0 ) is denoted by 0 . We can now write k k k 8G c 2 = H 2 2 = 1 = 2 2 . (110) 3 a a a H If = 1, k = 0; but k is a constant and so must always remain zero, and hence cannot evolve with time but must remain unity always. This is called a critical-density universe. Of course, receives contribution from everything like matter, radiation, and dark matter; even dark energy. Often cosmologists call k/a2 H 2 the curvature density k , and hence the equation becomes H2 = i + k = 1 ,
i
(111)
where we take the sum over all matter, radiation, dark matter, and dark energy 13 . The present estimate is baryon = 0.0456 0.0016, CDM = 0.227 0.014, and = 0.728 0.016, so that i = 1.0006 0.0060, which is perfectly consistent with a at universe model.
13 The role of the cosmological constant will be described in detail later, but it is enough at this stage to know that we can dene a density parameter for the cosmological constant, which is the best candidate for the dark energy.
28
2.0
""

0ECD HA@IDEBJ #5 0ECD 5 5A=H?D6A= CO2H A?J A
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5KFAH
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9 9 9
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Figure 2: (a) The evidence of dark energy from supernova Ia studies.i (b) The allowed region in the m - plane, from supernova studies, baryon acoustic oscillation (This is some sort of clustering of baryons in the universe due to the primordial acoustic waves and acts as a standard cosmological ruler), and cosmic microwave background data. Q. Using the mass-energy relationship, show that c (t0 ) = 1.69h2 109 J/m3 = 8.37 1010 J/m3 . 6.4.2 The deceleration parameter (112)
The deceleration parameter quanties how the rate of expansion changes. Its value at the present time, q0 , is dened as a(t0 ) a(t0 ) a (t0 ) 1 = 2 q0 = , (113) 2 a(t0 ) H0 a (t0 ) so that if we make a Taylor expansion of a(t) about its present value a(t0 ), we can write 1 a(t) = a(t0 ) + a (t0 )(t t0 ) + a (t0 )(t t0 )2 + 2 1 a(t) 2 = 1 + H0 (t t0 ) q0 H0 (t t0 )2 + a(t0 ) 2 Q. Consider a matter-lled universe so that p = 0. Show, from eq. (104), that q0 = 1 4G 3 = 0 . 3 8Gc 2 (115)
(114)
Thus, a measurement of q0 immediately gives 0 . Q. For a radiation-lled universe, p = 1 3 . Again perform the same exercise and show that q0 = 0 . 2 / 3 Q. Suppose a(t) = a(t0 )(t/t0 ) . Show that H = 2/3t and q0 > 0 14 .
6.5
The redshift
Consider two nearby point sources (for cosmology, this is equivalent to two close galaxies) at a separation dr . If their relative velocity is dv , we can write dv = (a/a )dr = Hdr . The galaxies are
14 q0 is an experimentally measureable quantity, and for an accelerating universe, q0 < 0. It is this observation that led to the concept of dark energy.
29
connected by a light signal, so dr = dt. The change in wavelength between the emitter and the receiver galaxies is given by d = r e , so d a da a , = dv = dr = dt = e a a a (116)
which gives a. So the wavelength increases and the energy decreases as the space expands. The redshift can be expressed as a(tr ) r = . (117) 1+z = e a(te ) So, if z = 0.5, the size of the universe was only 2 3 -rd of its present size when the light was emitted. Cosmologists often quote the age (which is related to the size) as the redshift. For large z (z 1) one can neglect 1 on the left-hand side of (117).
7
7.1
The evolution of the universe

Matter dominance
Next, we need to solve the Friedmann equations to know how the universe evolves. If there is only non-relativistic matter, p = 0, so the uid equation becomes a + 3 = 0 = a 1 d 1 (a3 ) = 0 = a3 = constant = 3 , 3 a dt a (118)
so that the density falls as the volume increases, which is quite intuitive. If the universe is at (which it probably is to a very good extent, and we will see why we can assume it to be this at, or even more, at the past), k = 0, and we can scale a by any constant since it is only the ratio a/a that appears. Let us set a(t0 ) = 1 so that physical and comoving coordinates are the same at present. This give the density at any time t: (t) = Thus, for at universe, 8G 0 a 2 = 2 a 3 a3 0 . a3 8G0 1 . 3 a (119)
= a 2 =
(120)
Assume that the solution has a power-law form: a(t) tq . The left-hand side goes as t2q2 and the right-hand side as tq , which are equal only if q = 2/3. So we can write a(t) = a(t0 ) as a(t0 ) = 1. This also gives (t) = and t t0
2/3
t t0
2/3
(121)
0 t2 0 0 = , a3 t2
(122)
2 a = . (123) a 3t This shows that the expansion slows down with time but never quite reaches zero. Thus, even the pull of gravity is not enough to make the universe recollapse. H=
30
7.2
Radiation dominance
1 . This The discussion is eectively the same except for the fact that radiation has a pressure p = 3 gives 1 d 1 a (a4 ) = 0 = a4 = constant = 4 . (124) + 4 = 0 = 4 a a dt a Assuming a power-law dependence, this gives
a(t) =
t t0
1/2
(t) =
0 0 t2 0 = , a4 t2
H=
a 1 = . a 2t
(125)
Again, the universe expands forever, but the rate of expansion is slower than a matter-dominated universe. Why does the density go down as a4 ? Three powers of a are due to volume expansion. However, as the space stretches, the wavelength increases, and the energy goes down as 1/a due to the stretching of space alone, so the combined dependence is 1/a4 . Remember that neutrinos are relativistic and hence are a component of radiation.
7.3
Mixtures
Now consider a more realistic universe with both matter and radiation, with densities mat and rad respectively, so the total density is = mat + rad . Both the densities fall with time; mat as a3 and rad as a4 . The solution is messy, but it helps if we try to solve it in the extreme limits, when one density dominates the other. Assume that the radiation dominates the matter. Then a(t) t, so rad 1 , t2 mat 1 1 3/2 . 3 a t (126)
Thus, the matter density falls o more slowly, so radiation dominance is an unstable situation; even if we have a tiny bit of matter, ultimately it will come to dominate the evolution. Whn the matter becomes dominant, expansion rate speeds up: a(t) t2/3 , so mat 1 , t2 rad 1 1 8/3 . 4 a t (127)
The radiation density falls faster (naturally, as the space stretches), so matter becomes more and more dominant with time, and this is a stable situation. This is, in all probability, the state where our universe is in now. The number densities for both matter and radiation fall o as 1/a3 due to the expansion of the volume. For radiation, the photons also lose energy due to the stretching of space as 1/a, causing the redshift.
7.4
More exotic situations
Suppose the equation of state is p = ( 1) where 0 < < 2. This leads to a3 = constant, and hence a(t) = (t/t0 )2/3 . The Hubble parameter goes down as H = 2/3t. This solution breaks down when = 0. Here p = , and hence = 0, so the density is constant in time: = 0 . But this does not mean that the universe is static; in fact, there is an exponential increase: 8G0 a 2 = 2 a 3 = a = 8G0 a = a(t) exp 3 31
8G0 t . 3
(128)
It is believed that this actually happened almost after the big bang, and is known as ination. Suppose the universe is curved so that there is a curvature term k/a2 in the Friedmann equations. The densities both matter and radiation fall faster than 1/a2 , so ultimately the universe will be curvature-dominated, however small k might be. That it is still so at suggests that to start with, the curvature term must have been extremely and uncomfortably close to zero. This is uncomfortable because there is no apparent symmetry to keep it to zero; so it must have been a very fortuitous accident to get the present universe. This is known as the atness problem and is one of the motivations behind the idea of ination, which we discuss later. However, if the curvature term ever dominates, a becomes constant, and the universe undergoes a free expansion. From the experimental standpoint, it is better to consider a at universe with a nonzero , where the Friedmann equations are given by (105). Obviously, if is large, it can overcome the negative contributions from pressure and density and lead to an accelerating universe: a > 0. We can dene a density for the cosmological constant (t) = , 3H 2 (129)
and following the same steps as in eq. (110), we get + 1 = k a2 H 2 , (130)
so that the conditions for open, at, and closed universes are, respectively, 0 < + < 1, + = 1, + > 1. Here, stands for combined matter (including dark matter and neutrinos) and radiation densities. We can similarly dene a pressure for the cosmological constant = , 8G (131)
so that /c , where c is the critical density. The Friedmann equation can be written as H2 = 8G k ( + ) 2 . 3 a (132)
is constant, so the uid equation gives + p = 0. The cosmological constant has a negative eective pressure; work is done on the cosmological constant uid as the universe expands. What exactly is the origin of the cosmological constant? Perhaps the origin is the zero-point energy of the quantum elds. This can be treated as an energy of the vacuum; particle physics never bothers about it since only the dierence between zero-level (vacuum) and the excited levels matters. However, such a nonzero energy density (analogous to the zero-point energy of the quantum harmonic oscillator) contributes to . Unfortnately, it turns out that the contribution from the elds is about 60 orders of magnitude larger than the experimentally favoured value of . This is one of the most challenging problems in cosmology. To have an idea about the fate of the universe, see gure 3. The line + = 1 (in the gure is called M ) separates the open and closed universes. If is large, there is no big bang solution. For a pressureless universe, the deceleration parameter is given by 1 q0 = 0 , 2 (133)
3 0 1. So > 1/3 is so there will be acceleration if > 0 /2. If the universe is at, q0 = 2 the required condition for acceleration. Note that goes down with time, but is a constant.
32
3
No Big Bang
99% 95% 90%

68%
0
Flat =0 Universe
expands forever lly ol rec lapses eventua

ed os t cl fla en op
-1
Figure 3: The allowed region in the - plane. Supernova allowed region has been superposed. Also see gure 2 (b). So even if there is a tiny cosmological constant, ultimately it will dominate the evolution of the 1 universe. The acceleration starts when > 3 . Whether the universe expands forever or recollapses depends on both and . If the matter (plus radiation, dark matter, etc.) density is small, the universe expands if > 0. If the matter density is large, the gravitational pull can overcome a small positive cosmological constant and cause recollapse. The present estimate is 0.3, 0.7 (see g. 2(b)), so the universe is expected to be at, expanding forever, and accelerating. What happens when the universe expands to, say, 5 3 . Only will go down by a factor of 1/53 = 1/125 times its present size? Right now / 7 (assuming matter dominance), so at that time, / = 0.43/125 0.0034. If the universe is still at, + = 1, so 0.003 and 0.997. This shows that the evolution will entirely be governed by the cosmological constant, and it will be an exponential expansion.
8
8.1
The universe
The age of the universe
The natural time scale associated with cosmology is the inverse of the Hubble parameter. For 1 example, if the present time is denoted t0 , we can set its scale by equating it with H0 . Putting 1 Mpc equal to 3.086 1019 km and 1 year equal to 3.156 107 s, we get
1 H0 = 13.9 109 yr ,
(134)
which is a very close estimate to the actual age of the universe, 13.75 0.11 billion years. If the universe has only matter in it, and has a critical density c , then we know how the Hubble 1 parameter varies: H = 2/3t, and so t0 = 2 3 H0 , which is quite a bit smaller than the expected age of the universe. Geology tells us that the earth is about 5 billion years old, the universe must be older than that. How do we measure the exact age of the universe? This is obtained by measuring the spectrum of the uranium isotopes in the galactic disc. Uranium is formed inside the dying and exploding stars by something known as the r -process. If we know from theory the ratio by which the two dominant isotopes of uranium, U 235 and U 238 , are expected to be produced, and if we can measure their relative abundances now, then with the 33
knowledge of their half-lives (which is very accurately known), we can nd the time when the rst such explosions occurred. We might add a billion years for the formation and evolution of those rst-generation stars. If the universe contains only matter, but is open (0 < 1), then it can be shown that H 0 t0 = 1 2 0 0 cosh1 1 0 2(1 0 )3/2 0 . (135)
The maximum value of the right-hand side is 1 for an empty universe, and if the universe is critical (0 = 1), we get t0 = 2/3H0 back. For the estimated density 0 = 0.3, H0 t0 0.8. On the other hand, if the universe is at, but contains a nonzero , the equation becomes 1 1 1 0 2 1 + 1 0 2 . (136) H 0 t0 = ln = sinh1 3 1 0 3 1 0 0 0 Q. What is the age of the universe for 0 = 0.3, using eq. (136)? Q. Show that (136) gives H0 t0 = 2 3 as 0 1. Numerically nd the value of 0 when H0 t0 = 1. Q. The initial abundances of the two uranium isotopes are expected to be at the ratio U 235 : U 238 = 1.65. The present ratio is only 0.0065. The half-lives are 235 = 0.714 109 yr, 238 = 4.62 109 yr. Find the time when the explosion occurred. Add another billion years and youll get approximately the time when the galaxy was formed.
8.2
The cosmic microwave background
While this all-pervading background was accidentally discovered by Penzias and Wilson in 1965, it was only the rst nine minutes of data taken by the Far Infrared Absolute Spectrophotometer (FIRAS), on board the Cosmic Background Explorer (COBE) satellite launched by NASA in 1989, that established the black-bpdy spectrum to an accuracy better than 1%. Now we know that it is smooth to a level of 105 with a temperature of 2.725 0.001 K.
You found earlier that the present-day energy density in CMBR is 4.17 1014 J/m3 . Using eq. (112), we get rad = 2.47 105 h2 = 4.98 105 . (137) Clearly, it is insignicant compared to the other components of . But it was not so always. We know rad a4 . Comparing with eq. (96), we get a very important relation: T 1 . a (138)
Thus, the universe cools as it expands, and it was arbitrarily hot at arbitrarily smaller time. The interesting point is that once the radiation is thermalised and attained a black-body character, it will always remain a black-body spectrum. This is evident from the black-body energy distribution, eq. (95). Both and T vary as 1/a, so the exponential in the denominator retains its form. 3 in the numerator goes down as 1/a3 , but the volume in which the radiation was increases by the same amount, so the spectrum remains unchanged. Obviously, both and T go down, so the peak of the distribution shifts to the low-energy end, and the energy density goes down as 1/a4 . Given, rad (t0 ) = 4.17 1014 J/m3 , and mean energy of a microwave photon Emean 3kB T = 7.05 104 eV = 1.13 1022 J , we get the present number density of photons: n = 3.69 108 m3 . 34 (140) (139)
Assuming baryon = 0.0456, and using eq. (112), we get the energy density of baryons: baryon = 3.7 1011 J/m3 . (141)
Baryons are non-relativistic, so its energy is equal to its rest mass, which is 938 MeV = 1.5 1010 J. This gives the number density of baryons nb = 0.25 m3 . Even though there are many more photons than baryons, nb = 6.78 1010 , n their contribution to is negligible as they have rise to a serious question: why the number is of expect equal number of baryons and antibaryons so the net baryon number of the universe should be discussed later in the subsection baryogenesis. (142)
(143)
extremely low energy. However, even this gives the order of 1010 and not zero? After all, we to be produced out of the primordial radiation, be zero. This is still an open problem, and will
Next comes the question: how did the CMBR originate, and what does it tell us? The origin of CMBR is easy to understand. In the primordial soup, there were a huge number of energetic photons, plus some protons and electrons, and some charge neutral particles like neutrinos and neutrons. The number of electrons was the same as the number of protons, but they could not form a hydrogen atom, because as soon as the atom was formed, the electron was blasted away by one of those energetic photons. This could occur because the energy of the photon was more than the ionisation energy of hydrogen, 13.6 eV. Once the electron becomes free, it could have interacted with any other photon; this is known as Thomson scattering. Thus, the mean free path of the photon was quite small; the interaction probability was large, and the universe is said to be in an opaque phase. One can estimate the mean free path. Suppose the size of the universe was one-millionth of the present size: a = 106 . The temperature was 3 million K, and so the mean energy of the photon was 3kB T 250 eV, enough to ionise a hydrogen atom. The electron density at present is 0.2/m3 , so at that time it was 2 1017 /m3 . The mean free path is roughly given by 1/ne e , where e = 6.65 1029 m2 is the Thomson scattering cross-section. This gives a mean free path of 7.5 1010 m. Light takes about 250 seconds to travel this distance, which is much smaller than the age of the universe at that time. As the universe expands and cools, the photons lose their energy, and there comes a time when their energy falls below 13.6 eV. Once that happens, the hydrogen atom remains stable, and the free electrons are quickly removed from the soup. The mean free path of the photon increases by a huge amount; in fact it gets larger than the size of the universe. This is known as decoupling; the universe becomes transparent to the photons. Since then, the photons travel unimpeded, and lose their energy as the universe expands. At the time of decoupling, the distribution was that of a black-body; so even now it retains the black-body character. We can make a crude estimate of the temperature when the photons decoupled, by equating 3kB T with 13.6 eV. This gives a temperature of roughly 50000 K. This is too large an estimate, and we can see why. It is not strictly necessary for the mean energy to go below 13.6 eV. Remember that there are approximately 1.5 109 photons per baryon. Even if one of them has an energy more than 13.6 eV, it will ionise the atom, and then the rest of the photons can interact with the free electron. Thus, the temperature should be such that the probability that even one out of those 1.5 billion photons will not have the ionisation energy. The photon energy distribution has a Boltzmann tail, and the decoupling temperature Tdec is given by exp(13.6/kB Tdec ) = 1 1.5 109 Tdec = 35 13.6 7500 K . kB ln(1.5 109 ) (144)
Even this contains an overestimation by a factor of 2.5, and a more rened calculation brings it down to 3000 K. At that time, the universe was roughly one-thousandth of its size, or z = 1000 (the experimental number is z = 1090.89 0.69, note the accuracy). The photons are travelling freely since that time, and are now reaching us uniformly from all parts of the sky, originating as if on the surface of a sphere whose radius is the length those photons travelled. This is known as the surface of last scattering. (A good analogue of this surface is the view of the sky on a cloudy day. We can only see the clouds, not the sky above.) Observers at other parts of the universe will see photons coming from dierent spheres, so the surface of last scattering is not something uniform over the entire universe. Needless to say, the photons are also getting cooled due to the expansion of the universe. At present, rad is 5 105 and M is 0.3. But the former falls o as a4 and the latter only as a3 , so at what value of a were they equal? The answer is a = 6000 15 , so at a = 1000, the universe was denitely matter-dominated. In the matter-dominated phase, a t2/3 , and taking t0 = 13.7 109 yr = 4.3 1017 s, and a0 = 1, we get tdec 1.4 1013 s = 434000 yr . (145) The actual estimate is a bit less, like 380000 years, because we have neglected in our estimate which speeds up the expansion rate (again, the experimental error is less than 0.5%).
8.3
The horizon problem
The uniformity of CMBR throws another puzzle of Big Bang cosmology. Consider two points A and B in the sky opposite to each other. The spectrum is identical for both these points, so there must have been some way of communication between them. But light from A has only reached up to us till now, so it could not have reached the B. How, then, was the communication established? What makes the spectra from A and B identical? This is known as the horizon problem. In fact, the problem is much worse than this. The photons have been travelling unimpeded since decoupling, so the uniformity must have been established before decoupling took place. But the universe was very young then, and only very nearby points could have been in causal contact with each other. Since then, the universe has expanded thousandfold, and even points which are very close in the sky now (say a degree or two apart) could not have been in contact at the decoupling epoch. Again, as we will see, ination helps us to solve this problem. However, note that CMBR is not exactly uniform there are anisotropies at the scale of 1 in 105 over the smooth spectrum, which points to some degree of non-smooth nature at distant past, perhaps relevant for galaxy and structure formations. Q. Show that the velocity of light is roughly given by c = 3.076 107 Mpc/yr. If the age of the universe is 13.7 billion years and the decoupling occurred 380000 years ago, what is the radius of the surface of last scattering? [Note: The actual size is more than this roughly by a factor of three. This is because as the light comes towards us, the space expands.] Q. Right now, rad /baryon 1.1 103 , so the universe is matter dominated. At what value of a were they equal? What was the temperature then? What was the number density ratio n /nb ? If you take all matter into account so that M (t0 ) = 0.3, at what value of a did the transition take place? Q. Given, kB = 8.619 105 eV/K, and the mean energy of a photon is 3kB T , nd the size of the universe when the photons had an average energy of 1 MeV. If the present number density of the electrons is 0.2/m3 , what was the density then? Q. The photon decoupling occurred roughly when the universe was 1013 s old, corresponding to a temperature of 3000 K. If it were radiation dominated till that point (which it was not), a(t) t1/2 . Calculate the temperature when the universe was 1 s old. What was the average photon energy
15
It goes down a bit if we include neutrinos in rad , but still is well above a = 1000.
36
then? Q. The LHC is going to have collisions with an energy of 3000 GeV (the energy is distributed among the constituents of the protons). At what time the universe was this hot? Q. Given, the universe had a temperature of 3000 K at 1013 s and 10000 K at 1012 s, and the transition from radiation to matter dominance occurred between this. Set up the equation to nd the transition temperature and nd the solution iteratively.
The early universe
The photons decoupled at z 1000, when the universe was matter-dominated. The only exciting thing that happened after that epoch is the formation of structures: the galaxies and the stars. In fact, the rst galaxies formed quite early; we have observed in October 2010 the galaxy UDFy38135539, which was formed before the universe was 800 million years old. Another galaxy was discovered in January 2011 which formed only about 480 million years after the Big Bang. While the formation of structures is an extremely interesting subject by its own right, we will try to focus on earlier times, when the universe was very young. Of course, we cannot go back to t = 0; that is a singularity of the Big Bang model, corresponding to an innite temperature. Before we start to track the universe backward, there is one point that we should carefully consider. The radiation in the universe includes all relativistic particles, which means neutrinos and antineutrinos (we assume them to be massless, though, strictly speaking, they are not) as well as photons; even electrons are relativistic when kB T me . While they become nonrelativistic much earlier (roughly at a temperature of 0.5 MeV or 6 109 K), the cosmic neutrino background is still a part of the radiation density (even though they are extremely hard, almost impossible, to detect). How should we estimate ? Both photon and a - pair have two degrees of freedom; this is true only if neutrinos are massless, or are their own antiparticles if they are massive 16 . However, there are 3 such light neutrinos, and the integral over the Fermi distribution gives a factor of 7 4 /120 instead of 4 /15 for the Bose distribution. Together, they give an overall enhancement of 3 7 8 = 21/8 for the neutrino energy density over the photon energy density. If you remember, you have worked this out earlier. Unfortunately, this is not exactly true, and not cosmology but particle physics is responsible for that. When the photon temperature was above me = 0.51 MeV, the e+ -e pairs were in thermal equilibrium with the photons and + e+ + e could proceed with equal strength in both directions. At that time, T = T . Then the photons cooled, electrons became heavy enough to be pair produced (this is also known as a freeze-out of electrons), but the remaining positrons annihilated with electrons and produced photons. Thus, pair creation was no longer possible, but pair annihilation still was; the energetic photons were quickly thermalised in the low-energy thermal bath of the photons. In short, even though the photons cooled, the cooling was slowed down because there was a feedback from the e+ -e annihilation, and the eective temperature was higher than what it would have been in the absence of pair annihilation. Neutrinos could not take part in such a process, because e+ + e + can be mediated by the weak gauge bosons W and Z (why not by photons?). Those bosons are much heavier, and weak interaction has already become much weaker in strength than the electromagnetic interaction. So, only the photons and not the neutrinos are going to be reheated.
Such fermions are called Majorana fermions. Only neutrino can be a Majorana fermion as it is charge neutral. There are, of course, a lot of proposed but still hypothetical Majorana fermions, including one which is an excellent cold dark matter candidate.
16
37
The entropy density of a sea of relativistic particles at temperature T is given by s= 2 2 g T 3 , 45 (146)
where g is the number of degrees of freedom. Before annihilation, the total degrees of freedom of the electron-positron-photon soup was 11 2 (2 for photon, and 4 for electron-positron pair they are 11 7 for the Fermi distribution, so 2 + 4 7 Dirac fermions weighted by 8 8 = 2 ). After annihilation, 17 only photons remain , so there are 2 degrees of freedom. Using (g T 3 )before we get
annihilation
= (g T 3 )after
1/3
annihilation
(147)
Tafter
annihilation
11 4
Tbefore
annihilation
(148)
This raises the photon temperature from the neutrino temperature. rad is proportional to T 4 , so = 3 7 8 4 11
4/3
rad = 0.68rad = 3.4 105 ,
(149)
and hence the total density for the relativistic particles is rel = rad + = 8.4 105 . (150)
rel falls as 1/a4 whereas M falls only as 1/a, so the transition from a radiation-dominated phase to a matter-dominated phase took place when at = 1 rel . M 3238 (151)
Speaking roughly, let us take T = 104 K at t = 1012 s. We can divide the time before that like this (multiply the temperature roughly by 104 to get the energy in eV):
1 (We have taken M = DM + b . A precise number is a t = 1 + zt = 3233 87.) The temperature was about 8800 K; this is before photons decoupled. We can also estimate the time, considering 12 that since then a t2/3 . This is close to 2 10 s, or about 64000 years. Before that, the universe was radiation dominated and a t, T 1/ t.
While these are the main characteristics, it is possible to focus on denite reactions more accurately. For example, the synthesis of atomic nuclei from protons and neutrons started when the universe was about 3 minutes old; before that, the photons were so energetic that they would have blasted the nucleus apart 18 . Nucleosynthesis stopped at 20 minutes, after which the temperature and density dropped to such a level that nuclear fusion cannot continue. Between 1 and 10 seconds was the lepton epoch, where hadrons and anti-hadrons annihilated to produce leptons and antileptons; they were also produced from photons. After 10 seconds, the temperature dropped to a level where lepton production stopped. The leptons and antileptons still annihilated, leaving a small lepton asymmetry to keep the universe charge neutral. Neutrinos decoupled at about 1 second and formed the cosmic neutrino background. The quarks started hadronising at 106 seconds. Before that, there existed a plasma of free quarks, antiquarks, and gluons, along with leptons and photons. At the beginning of the electroweak epoch (which corresponds to an energy of 1016 GeV), the strong force was of the same strength as the electroweak force perhaps there was a unied force law at that time; we call it the Grand Unication. The Grand Unication broke down at 1016 GeV, but electromagnetism and weak forces were still unied,
17 18
The remaining electrons can take part only in Thomson scattering, that does not change g . Thus, their energy must be in the nuclear binding energy range, i.e., MeV.
38
Time 1013 s - t0
Temperature 3000 K - 3 K
Characteristic Atoms, galaxies, stars. Photons decoupled (CMBR) Matter-dominated but still opaque. No atoms. Nucleosynthesis starts and ends (3-20 minutes) Protons and neutrons join to form atomic nuclei. Only neutrinos are decoupled. Hadron epoch: free quarks hadronise. Free electrons, protons, neutrons, neutrinos. Everything is interacting with everything. Muons and other unstable particles decayed. Energy is still too high for nuclei. Quark epoch: Free quarks, leptons, photons, but electroweak phase transition has occurred. Electroweak epoch Ination and other exotic phenomena Quantum gravity (?)
1012 s - 1013 s 1 s - 1012 s
10000 K - 3000 K 1010 K - 10000 K
106 s - 1 s
1013 K - 1010 K
1012 s - 106 s
1016 K - 1013 K
1036 s - 1012 s Before 1036 s
1029 K - 1016 K > 1029 K
and W and Z bosons still massless. The electroweak symmetry broke at the end of the electroweak epoch ( 100 GeV), and electromagnetism and weak forces became distinct. The weak gauge bosons became massive at this time. What happened before the electroweak epoch? This is a speculative region, but what in all probability happened is a very transient but very rapid exponential expansion, known as ination. The rest is open to speculation and wild guesses. Q. What is the temperature of the cosmic neutrino background now? What is the number density?
10
Nucleosynthesis
An important test of the Big Bang model is the synthesis of light elements, which is known as Big Bang Nucleosynthesis (BBN). While medium and heavy elements are synthesized inside the stars, there are some light elements, apart from hydrogen, with which even the rst generation stars started their lives 19 . These elements include deuterium (D), He3 , trace amount of Li7 and even smaller amount of Li6 ; however, the most important of them is He4 . While He4 is synthesized in stars in the p-p chain, the amount of He4 that might have formed inside all the stars from the birth of the universe is way too small from the amount that is found. So there must be a signicant amount of He4 that came out of the BBN. Some unstable radioactive isotopes were also formed, like H 3 , Be7 , and Be8 , which either decayed or fused with other nuclei to form stable isotopes 20 .
The rst generation stars are the rst stars that were born after the Big Bang. The second generation stars started with some of the remnants of the rst generation stars, so they might easily contain some amount of the heavier elements. 20 The rst paper on BBN is also called the paper after its authors, Ralph Alpher, who was a graduate student of Gamow, Hans Bethe, and George Gamow himself. While some of the conclusions came out to be incorrect, the
19
39
BBN produced no elements heavier than beryllium, due to a bottleneck; the absence of a stable nucleus with 5 or 8 nucleons. In stars, the bottleneck is passed by collisions of three He4 nuclei at the same time, producing C 12 (this is known as the triple- process). However, this process is very slow, taking tens of thousands of years to convert a signicant amount of helium to carbon in stars, and therefore it made a negligible contribution in the minutes following the Big Bang. The condition for nucleosynthesis could not have been reached before the rst second. After 1 s, the universe had a temperature of 1010 K, which corresponds to approximately 1 MeV. The nuclear binding energy is of that order, so before that limit is reached, no stable nucleus could have been formed; the argument is just the same as for photon decoupling. The energetic photons would have ripped the nucleus apart. All baryons except proton and neutron decayed after 1 second. The free neutron is not stable but has a very long half-life: tn 1/2 = 614 s. Thus, when the photon energy fell below 1 MeV, all the primordial neutrons were still there. They would have decayed if they could not become constituents of the nuclei. Once they are inside the nuclei, they become stable.
Figure 4: The mass fraction of the elements synthesized in the BBN. The widths are due to experimental as well as theoretical uncertainties. The vertical band shows the BBN predictions, which are very well satised for all the elements except Li7 . Before 1 second, but when mN kB T (N stands for either proton or neutron), the nucleons are non-relativistic, and are in thermal equilibrium. They follow a Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution in which the number density is mN . (152) nn,p m3/2 exp kB T Here, we have used c = 1, so mn = 939.6 MeV, mp = 938.3 MeV (do not confuse n for number density with n for neutron). The constant for proportionality is the same for both nucleons, so nn = np mn mp
3/2
exp
m kB T
(153)
where m = mn mp = 1.3 MeV. If kB T m, nn and np would be almost identical. There can also be conversions: n + e p + e , n + e+ p + e . (154)
These interactions produce rapidly as long as the temperature is about 0.8 MeV. After that, these being weak processes, the probability decreases so much that the rate of conversion becomes longer
basic idea survived.
40
than the lifetime of the universe. Once that happens, the ratio becomes constant, and could have been further changed only by free neutron decay. At that point, nn = exp (1.3/0.8) 0.2 . np (155)
10.1
Helium abundance
Even this is not enough for the production of the light elements to start. They go through the chain p + n D , D + p He3 , D + D He4 . (156)
Thus, deuterium is an important intermediate step. But it is a very weakly bound system (the binding energy is 2.2 MeV) and cannot have a sucient concentration for helium production unless the temperature is of the order of 0.1 MeV 21 ; the photons will break it apart before that. Thus, BBN starts only when the universe is about 3 minutes old. Ultimately, it is about 400 seconds before all neutrons get absorbed in nuclei. However, before that, the neutron concentration further depletes because of free neutron decay, and 400 ln 2 nn 0.2 exp np 614 1 . 8 (157)
As a rst approximation, we can neglect the formation of other nuclei apart from He4 . Thus, all neutrons end up in He4 ; every such nucleus contains two neutrons, so nHe4 = 1 2 nn . Each helium nucleus has four nucleons, so the baryon mass fraction in He4 is given by Y4 = 4 nn /2 2 = 0.22 . nn + np 1 + np /nn (158)
A more sophisticated calculation yields something close to 0.24, which is almost precisely what the experments found. The number is a function of baryon abundance, or nb /n , and it is a groundbreaking success of Big Bang cosmology to predict the light element abundances to such an accuracy. Q. How would Y4 change if (i) the neutron half-life is smaller by a factor of 10; (ii) the deuterium binding energy is larger; (iii) nb /n is larger; (iv) Be8 is stable and is more bound than He4 ? Do you expect any primordial C 12 if Be8 were stable?
10.2
Deuterium abundance
Deuterium is in some ways the opposite of He4 in that while He4 is very stable, deuterium is very weakly bound. Because He4 is very stable, there is a strong tendency on the part of two deuterium nuclei to combine to form He4 . The only reason BBN does not convert all of the deuterium in the universe to He4 is that the expansion of the universe cooled the universe and the conversion stopped short before it could be completed. One consequence of this is that unlike He4 , the amount of deuterium is very sensitive to initial conditions. The denser the universe is, the more deuterium gets converted before time runs out, and the less deuterium remains. There are no known post-Big Bang processes which would produce signicant amounts of deuterium. Hence observations about deuterium abundance suggest that the universe is not innitely old, which is in accordance with the Big Bang theory.
21 The calculation is a bit complicated but analogous to the Boltzmann tail argument we used to calculate the CMBR decoupling. This is known as deuterium bottleneck.
41
During the 1970s, there were major eorts to nd processes that could produce deuterium other than BBN. The problem was that while the concentration of deuterium in the universe is consistent with the Big Bang model as a whole, it is too high if M = baryon . If we had that many baryons, much of the currently observed deuterium would have been burned into He4 . This inconsistency is another evidence that not all matter in the universe is in the form of baryons; there must be a signicant concentration of non-baryonic matter, which in all probability is the dark matter. The predictions for He3 and deuterium are even closer than that for He4 . However, there is some discrepancy between the Li7 prediction and actual abundance, by about a factor of 3-4; this is a subject of much active interest. BBN stopped when the universe was about 20 minutes old. This is because both temperature and density fell to such a level that nuclear fusion was no longer possible. The relative abundances of the light elements became xed, apart from He4 , which is produced even by stellar nucleosynthesis.
10.3
Baryogenesis
While the generation of lighter elements is pretty well understood, one should try to answer how the protons and neutrons, or for that matter, the quarks and antiquarks created. They could have been created from a hot photon bath: + q + q . But then the net baryon number should have been zero; all known interactions are expected to conserve baryon number. One implication of this is that the proton is stable, because it is the lightest baryon, and decays such as p 0 + e+ are forbidden. The half-life of proton is more than 1034 years. If the baryon number is strictly conserved, all baryons should have annihilated with all antibaryons, and we expect nb /n = 0 and not something O(109 ). How it came to be nonzero is known as baryogenesis 22 . One solution could be that the universe started with a nonzero baryon number, but that solution is not very appealing: why such an asymmetry at the singularity? We would rather like to generate this asymmetry when the universe was very young, say at the beginning of the electroweak epoch. How baryogenesis occurred is still an open problem. There are so many hypothetical interactions which might produce a baryon asymmetry, but no known interactions do that. Even though we do not know the exact form of interaction, we know what should be the characteristics for a successful baryogenesis. These are known as Sakharov conditions: Baryon number violation; P (parity) and CP (charge-parity combined) violation; Deviation from thermal equilibrium. The origin of these conditions are easy to understand. First, baryon number has to be violated if we are to generate some baryons out of the initial state where the net baryon number was zero. Second, both parity and CP has to be violated if baryons and antibaryons are to be created in unequal amount. Of course, this asymmetry is really small: only about one baryon excess in a billion. Even with these two conditions, if the interactions proceed in a state of thermal equilibrium, the opposite reaction would proceed in the same amount, and whatever baryon asymmetry was produced would be annihilated. A good way to implement this is as follows. Suppose some very heavy particle, whose mass is of the order of 1015 -1016 GeV, was created at the very rst instants. These particles go out of
We do not see any antimatter anywhere in the universe except the timy amount produced at the particle physics laboratories. If there were antimatter stars and galaxies, we would have expected a huge amount of -ray ux when those antimatter galaxies collided and annihilated with matter galaxies. We get nothing even close to that.
22
42
While it is dicult to implement this in a concrete model 23 (there is no completely satisfactory model of baryogenesis yet), this gives rise to another problem of Big Bang cosmology. This is called the problem of relic abundance. If all those X particles decayed promptly, well and good. But Grand Unied theories predict some extremely massive stable particles too; one of them is the magnetic monopole. If you remember, Dirac showed that the existence of magnetic monopoles would show why the electric charge is quantised.
equilibrium very soon; they may annihilate to create photons but the photons, being cold enough, would not be able to produce them. Now suppose these particles are unstable and decay into baryons. Of course the antiparticles would decay into antibaryons. This involves baryon number violation. And then there is to be P and CP violation for the decay rates to be asymmetrical; q X q and X should not proceed at equal rate, where X is that enigmatic heavy particle.
The magnetic monopoles being very heavy, they become non-relativistic almost at the moment of their birth, and their density goes down only as a3 , while the density of radiation goes down as a4 . This makes the monopole density at the present instant just too high. To be quantitative, suppose the monopoles were created at the Grand Unied epoch, with a temperature of 2 1029 K (this corresponds to an energy of 2 1016 GeV). Since then, the temperature has gone down roughly by a factor of 1029 . If the universe is assumed to be radiation-dominated, its size has increased by the same factor. If mon /rad = 1010 to start with (something compatible with the baryon asymmetry), now it should have been 1019 1019 massive monopoles for every single photon, which is clearly against all experimental evidence! Where have all those stable relic particles gone? Q. Perform a more sophisticated calculation for the monopole density. If mon /rad = 1010 at 2 1029 K, when did the matter-radiation transition took place? (Assume all matter in the form of such monopoles; the temperature was still too high for all other particles to be relativistic). Since then, the universe was matter-dominated; what is the present value of mon /rad now?
11
Ination
Ination was a transient stage at almost the very beginning of the universe when it underwent a very rapid exponential expansion. There are various models of ination, but the exponential expansion is a common feature. To motivate ination, let us again go through the three major problems of the original Big Bang cosmology. The atness problem: The Friedmann equation can be written as |tot 1| = a2 H 2 |k| , (159)
where tot includes all matter, radiation, and cosmological constant densities. If the universe is matter-dominated, a t2/3 , H t1 , and hence (a2 H 2 )1 t2/3 . If it is radiation dominated, a t, H t1 , and (a2 H 2 )1 t. In both cases, |tot 1| is a monotonically increasing function with time. Thus, at geometry is an unstable situation; even if there is a slight curvature to start with, the universe will quickly become curvature-dominated. On the other hand, for such a curved universe, H 2 a2 , so a t, H t1 , and (a2 H 2 )1 is constant; so curvature-dominance is a stable situation. To have a quantitative estimate, take the present estimate |tot 1| < 4 104 . The age of the universe is 4 1017 seconds, so if the universe were radiation-dominated, Decoupling : t 1013 s |tot 1| < 108 ,
Weak interaction does violate both P and CP. The only problem is that the mechanism of CP violation as present in the Standard Model produces too small a baryon asymmetry, roughly by 9 orders of magnitude: nb /n O(1018 ). Thus, either this mechanism is not fully understood, or there is a stronger source of CP violation.
23
43
Matter radiation equality : t 1012 s |tot 1| < 109 , Electroweak symm. breaking : t 1012 s |tot 1| < 1033 . Nucleosynthesis : t 1 s |tot 1| < 1021 , (160)
So, (i) if the universe is still at, there must have been an immense ne-tuning to start with; (ii) even at the nucleosynthesis and decoupling epoch, the universe was denitely at, so we can safely assume k = 0 then. The horizon problem: This is simply the apparently strange uniformity of CMBR coming from dierent parts of the sky. Again, let us make a simple but quantitative estimate. The present age of the universe is t0 = 13.7 109 yr, so if the universe is not expanding, light could have travelled about 4110 Mpc, using c 3 107 Mpc/yr. The decoupling occurred at 1013 s, so light could have travelled only about 0.1 Mpc in that time. But that length of 0.1 Mpc has been stretched by a factor of (t0 /1013 )2/3 (its a matter-dominated universe), so it is now about 117 Mpc. So, this stretch subtends an angle of (117/4110) (180/ ) 1.6 . Even this is an overestimation, as the radius of the visible universe has been stretched since light left the surface of last scattering. Thus, in no case radiation coming from an angular separation of more than 1.6 in the sky should have the same characteristic. Relic abundance: This we have just discussed; if there are any stable extremely heavy particles as remnant of the beginning of the electroweak era (so the mass is about 1015 GeV), they will be non-relativistic too soon, and their density will be much more than the radiation density. This is incompatible with observation. Ination solves all these problems with a single stroke. The central idea is that during the ination, a > 0. From the acceleration equation (104), we see that + 3p < 0. Since the density is positive by denition, this implies a negative pressure: p < /3 for a > 0. We have already encountered such a scenario where the universe is dominated by a cosmological constant, and H2 = 3 a(t) = exp /3t . (161)
However, after some time, the ination must stop; so whatever is responsible for that exponential expansion must decay to ordinary particles. Then the Big Bang can proceed as usual. So the ination must have occurred even before the electroweak symmetry was broken; currently favoured models suggest that it occurred sometime between 1036 and 1032 s. How does ination solves all these problems? Note that a >0 da >0 dt d (aH ) > 0 , dt (162)
so during ination, aH increases with time, and if the ination is fast and large enough, even an initially curved universe becomes so at so quickly that all the evolution after the ination failed to move it from k 0. Maybe, after a long long time, it will move away from zero again. This is something that you have to visualize. Suppose you have a football, whose surface is curved. You have a small pinhole aperture, so you cannot see the entire football, but whatever you can see tells you that it is curved. Now you inate the ball, but at the same time move away from it with your pinhole, so you catch more and more surface of the ball. If the rate of ination is less than the rate you are moving away, the full curvature will come into view in a short time. Now suppose in a very small time, so small that you dont have enough time to move the pinhole, someone inates the ball to the size of the sun! Now, that will make the observed surface completely at, and it will remain at as you move away; unless you move at a very great distance, in a very distant future. 44
In short, the universe might have started with a nonzero curvature. But then ination occurred, and the curvature quickly came down to zero; and it was put to zero so strongly that it is still very close to zero. That also tells you that the universe that we can see is actually a very small fraction of the actual universe; most of the universe is not observable as light is yet to reach us from those parts. But if it were only a very small part to begin with, that could have been in thermal equilibrium before ination started. After ination, that became the total visible universe; so that tells you why radiation coming from dierent parts of the sky is isotropic. Once, before ination, all those parts were in causal contact; after ination, the isotropy still remains. So that solves the horizon problem too.
In fact, if the ination is suciently strong much stronger than what is required to solve the atness or horizon problems it can blow away all the relic particles too, so that the relic abundance is consistent with observation. One important point is that after ination, the temperature must drop to such a level that those heavy particles are not generated anymore. Let us try to calculate in a simplistic scenario how much ination is needed. Suppose the ination occurred at 1034 second, it is perfectly exponential, and the universe is always radiationdominated. Also, let us take |tot 1| < 103 . The present age is 4 1017 s, and |tot 1| t for a radiation-dominated universe, so |tot (t0 ) 1| < 103 |tot (1034 s) 1| < 2.5 1055 . (163)
During ination H is constant, so |tot 1| 1/a2 . Suppose just before the ination started, |tot 1| was of the order of 1, say 0.25. Thus, during ination, the size of the universe increased by a factor of 1054 = 1027 . This is a huge expansion and immediately puts most of the universe beyond our reach. In fact, we need a stronger expansion to solve the relic density problem. The presently favoured model of ination is sort of a slow-roll type. There is a scalar eld which is responsible for ination. The potential for the eld is like a hilly terrain; there is a part where the potential has a small downward slope, so when the eld is there, the kinetic energy is small (thats why it is called a slow-roll ination) and the potential energy is large. Once that slope ends, there is a steep downward jump ending in a deep valley; once the eld falls down this valley, the potential energy decreases very quickly, the kinetic energy increases, and the eld reaches its true vacuum state, after which it is no longer eective. It can be shown that the ination occurs in the slow-roll phase, and once the eld jumps down the valley, we get the normal expanding universe. Unfortunately, there is no scope for a mathematical discussion of this model.
45

General Relativity

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General Relativity

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Introduction to General Relativity and Cosmology

C.U., Physics, PG 4th semester Anirban Kundu

AK / GR and Cosmology / 2011

3 The Schwarzschild Metric 3.1 3.2

Black holes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Black holes are not forever . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 18

4 The Einstein Equation 4.1 4.2 4.3

5 Newtonian Cosmology 6 Modern Cosmology 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4

7 The evolution of the universe

7.1 7.2 7.3 7.4

8 The universe 8.1 8.2 8.3

AK / GR and Cosmology / 2011

9 The early universe 10 Nucleosynthesis

AK / GR and Cosmology / 2011

Why General Relativity?

AK / GR and Cosmology / 2011

AK / GR and Cosmology / 2011

AK / GR and Cosmology / 2011

AK / GR and Cosmology / 2011

The Equivalence Principle

AK / GR and Cosmology / 2011

miB miA . mgA mgB

AK / GR and Cosmology / 2011

The equivalence principle

AK / GR and Cosmology / 2011

Multiplying this by x / and using x = , x we get the equation of motion

AK / GR and Cosmology / 2011

Metric and ane connection

AK / GR and Cosmology / 2011

g33 1 00 g 0 = aar 2 sin2 , 2 x 1 aa g11 = g00 0 = , 2 x 1 kr 2 g11 1 a = g11 0 = . 2 x a

AK / GR and Cosmology / 2011

1 2 r = (r 2GM ) sin , r = r = , = cos sin , = cot . r

Weak gravity: the Newtonian limit

Compare this with the corresponding Newtons equation, d2 xi = i dt2 (51)

AK / GR and Cosmology / 2011

Gravitational redshift: Apparent weight of photons

AK / GR and Cosmology / 2011

The Schwarzschild Metric

AK / GR and Cosmology / 2011

AK / GR and Cosmology / 2011

Black holes are not forever

The Einstein Equation

AK / GR and Cosmology / 2011

AK / GR and Cosmology / 2011

R = g R . A combination of R and R is known as the Einstein curvature: 1 G = R g R. 2

Einstein equation in vacuum

AK / GR and Cosmology / 2011

Einstein equation for matter: the FRW geometry

AK / GR and Cosmology / 2011

H (t) = Its present value is denoted by H0 .

AK / GR and Cosmology / 2011

which is clearly inconsistent; a static universe can at best be empty.

AK / GR and Cosmology / 2011

Everything else follows. However, note that 23

AK / GR and Cosmology / 2011

Microscopic content of the universe

The energy density radiated o a black body is given by E d = (96)

AK / GR and Cosmology / 2011

AK / GR and Cosmology / 2011

(As we will see, the actual number is a bit dierent.)

Macroscopic content of the universe

The uid equation

AK / GR and Cosmology / 2011

To study the (100)

M HA@IDEBJ #5 +B) JDAH5 B