In cosmology, the relic abundance of a given elementary particle is a measure of the present quantity of that particle remaining from the Big Bang.
Relic abundance is modelled for WIMPs (weakly interacting massive particles) in the study of dark matter. [1]
Assuming that an elementary particle was formerly in thermal equilibrium, its relic abundance may be calculated using a Boltzmann equation. [2]
The temperature scaled abundance of a particle is defined [3] by
where is the number density:
that is, number of particles per physical volume (not the comoving volume).
The relic abundance of a particle is shown by indicates the asymptotic value of abundance of a species of a particle which it will reach after its "freeze-out". [4]
In Newtonian mechanics, linear momentum, translational momentum, or simply momentum is the product of the mass and velocity of an object. It is a vector quantity, possessing a magnitude and a direction. If m is an object's mass and v is its velocity, then the object's momentum is:
In SI units, momentum is measured in kilogram meters per second (kg⋅m/s).
In theoretical physics, quantum field theory (QFT) is a theoretical framework that combines classical field theory, special relativity and quantum mechanics,. QFT is used in particle physics to construct physical models of subatomic particles and in condensed matter physics to construct models of quasiparticles.
Hubble's law, also known as the Hubble–Lemaître law, is the observation in physical cosmology that galaxies are moving away from the Earth at speeds proportional to their distance. In other words, the farther they are the faster they are moving away from Earth. The velocity of the galaxies has been determined by their redshift, a shift of the light they emit toward the red end of the spectrum.
The Standard Model of particle physics is the theory describing three of the four known fundamental forces in the universe, as well as classifying all known elementary particles. It was developed in stages throughout the latter half of the 20th century, through the work of many scientists around the world, with the current formulation being finalized in the mid-1970s upon experimental confirmation of the existence of quarks. Since then, confirmation of the top quark (1995), the tau neutrino (2000), and the Higgs boson (2012) have added further credence to the Standard Model. In addition, the Standard Model has predicted various properties of weak neutral currents and the W and Z bosons with great accuracy.
There are several proposed types of exotic matter:
In theoretical physics, negative mass is a type of exotic matter whose mass is of opposite sign to the mass of normal matter, e.g. −1 kg. Such matter would violate one or more energy conditions and show some strange properties such as the oppositely oriented acceleration for negative mass. It is used in certain speculative hypothetical technologies, such as time travel to the past, construction of traversable artificial wormholes, which may also allow for time travel, Krasnikov tubes, the Alcubierre drive, and potentially other types of faster-than-light warp drives. Currently, the closest known real representative of such exotic matter is a region of negative pressure density produced by the Casimir effect.
In physics, a partition function describes the statistical properties of a system in thermodynamic equilibrium. Partition functions are functions of the thermodynamic state variables, such as the temperature and volume. Most of the aggregate thermodynamic variables of the system, such as the total energy, free energy, entropy, and pressure, can be expressed in terms of the partition function or its derivatives. The partition function is dimensionless, it is a pure number.
In physical cosmology, baryogenesis is the physical process that is hypothesized to have taken place during the early universe to produce baryonic asymmetry, i.e. the imbalance of matter (baryons) and antimatter (antibaryons) in the observed universe.
The ΛCDM or Lambda-CDM model is a parameterization of the Big Bang cosmological model in which the universe contains three major components: first, a cosmological constant denoted by Lambda and associated with dark energy; second, the postulated cold dark matter ; and third, ordinary matter. It is frequently referred to as the standard model of Big Bang cosmology because it is the simplest model that provides a reasonably good account of the following properties of the cosmos:
The Boltzmann equation or Boltzmann transport equation (BTE) describes the statistical behaviour of a thermodynamic system not in a state of equilibrium, devised by Ludwig Boltzmann in 1872. The classic example of such a system is a fluid with temperature gradients in space causing heat to flow from hotter regions to colder ones, by the random but biased transport of the particles making up that fluid. In the modern literature the term Boltzmann equation is often used in a more general sense, referring to any kinetic equation that describes the change of a macroscopic quantity in a thermodynamic system, such as energy, charge or particle number.
In geometry, a position or position vector, also known as location vector or radius vector, is a Euclidean vector that represents the position of a point P in space in relation to an arbitrary reference origin O. Usually denoted x, r, or s, it corresponds to the straight line segment from O to P. In other words, it is the displacement or translation that maps the origin to P:
In cosmology, the equation of state of a perfect fluid is characterized by a dimensionless number , equal to the ratio of its pressure to its energy density :
In relativistic classical field theories of gravitation, particularly general relativity, an energy condition is one of various alternative conditions that can be applied to the matter content of the theory when it is either not possible or desirable to specify this content explicitly. The hope is then that any reasonable matter theory will satisfy this condition or at least will preserve the condition if it is satisfied by the starting conditions.
The cosmic neutrino background is the universe's background particle radiation composed of neutrinos. They are sometimes known as relic neutrinos.
The thermodynamics of the universe is dictated by which form of energy dominates it - relativistic particles which are referred to as radiation, or non-relativistic particles which are referred to as matter. The former are particles whose rest mass is zero or negligible compared to their energy, and therefore move at the speed of light or very close to it; the latter are particles whose kinetic energy is much lower than their rest mass and therefore move much slower than the speed of light. The intermediate case is not treated well analytically.
Particle physics is the study of the interactions of elementary particles at high energies, whilst physical cosmology studies the universe as a single physical entity. The interface between these two fields is sometimes referred to as particle cosmology. Particle physics must be taken into account in cosmological models of the early universe, when the average energy density was very high. The processes of particle pair production, scattering and decay influence the cosmology.
In cosmology, baryon acoustic oscillations (BAO) are fluctuations in the density of the visible baryonic matter of the universe, caused by acoustic density waves in the primordial plasma of the early universe. In the same way that supernovae provide a "standard candle" for astronomical observations, BAO matter clustering provides a "standard ruler" for length scale in cosmology. The length of this standard ruler is given by the maximum distance the acoustic waves could travel in the primordial plasma before the plasma cooled to the point where it became neutral atoms, which stopped the expansion of the plasma density waves, "freezing" them into place. The length of this standard ruler can be measured by looking at the large scale structure of matter using astronomical surveys. BAO measurements help cosmologists understand more about the nature of dark energy by constraining cosmological parameters.
In Big Bang cosmology, neutrino decoupling was the epoch at which neutrinos ceased interacting with other types of matter, and thereby ceased influencing the dynamics of the universe at early times. Prior to decoupling, neutrinos were in thermal equilibrium with protons, neutrons and electrons, which was maintained through the weak interaction. Decoupling occurred approximately at the time when the rate of those weak interactions was slower than the rate of expansion of the universe. Alternatively, it was the time when the time scale for weak interactions became greater than the age of the universe at that time. Neutrino decoupling took place approximately one second after the Big Bang, when the temperature of the universe was approximately 10 billion kelvin, or 1 MeV.
Symmetries in quantum mechanics describe features of spacetime and particles which are unchanged under some transformation, in the context of quantum mechanics, relativistic quantum mechanics and quantum field theory, and with applications in the mathematical formulation of the standard model and condensed matter physics. In general, symmetry in physics, invariance, and conservation laws, are fundamentally important constraints for formulating physical theories and models. In practice, they are powerful methods for solving problems and predicting what can happen. While conservation laws do not always give the answer to the problem directly, they form the correct constraints and the first steps to solving a multitude of problems.
The Mészáros effect "is the main physical process that alters the shape of the initial power spectrum of fluctuations in the cold dark matter theory of cosmological structure formation". It was introduced in 1974 by Péter Mészáros considering the behavior of dark matter perturbations in the range around the radiation-matter equilibrium redshift and up to the radiation decoupling redshift . This showed that, for a non-baryonic cold dark matter not coupled to radiation, the small initial perturbations expected to give rise to the present day large scale structures experience below an additional distinct growth period which alters the initial fluctuation power spectrum, and allows sufficient time for the fluctuations to grow into galaxies and galaxy clusters by the present epoch. This involved introducing and solving a joint radiation plus dark matter perturbation equation for the density fluctuations ,
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