Ruth Durrer

Last updated
Ruth Durrer
Born1958 (age 64–65)
Kerns
Alma mater University of Zürich
Scientific career
Fields Astroparticle physics
Institutions University of Zürich
University of Geneva
University of Cambridge
Princeton University
Thesis Gauge-Invariant Cosmological Perturbation Theory  (1988)
Doctoral advisor Norbert Straumann

Ruth Durrer (born 1958) is a professor of Cosmology at the University of Geneva. She works on the cosmic microwave background, brane cosmology and massive gravity.

Contents

Early life and education

Durrer was born in Kerns. [1] She earned her high school diploma at Kantonales Lehrerseminar, and studied at the University of Zürich. [1] She completed her PhD on perturbation theory with Norbert Straumann at the University of Zürich in 1988. [2] [3] She was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Cambridge for a year, before joining Princeton University in 1989. [4] Durrer returned to Zürich in 1991, completing a postdoctoral fellowship. [2]

Research and career

Durrer was made an assistant professor at the University of Zürich in 1992, and full professor at the University of Geneva in 1995. [2] [5] She is a member of the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics. [6] She works on the cosmic microwave background and massive gravity. [7] [8] [9] Massive gravity describes an expanding universe with massive gravitons, which weakens gravity on large scales. [10] Durrer uses cosmological observations as a test for general relativity. [11]

Durrer has contributed extensively to the theoretical understanding of topological defects. She showed that cosmic textures can suppress the acoustic peaks of the angular power spectrum of the cosmic microwave background. [12] This results confirm that cosmic textures are not responsible for the distribution of matter in the observed universe. She worked with Neil Turok to demonstrate it is possible to use terrestrial lab-based experiments to test cosmological phase transitions in the early universe. [13] These include using liquid crystals to study the scaling solutions of string networks. [13] She has also demonstrated that density fluctuations in the early universe can result in the cosmological magnetic fields. [14] [15] [16] She showed that the scaling properties of these primordial magnetic fields can be determined by causality arguments alone. [17]

Durrer studied an extended area of space, separating it into 60 billion zones and using the c++ library LATfield2 with a supercomputer to study the movement of individual particles. [18] She used Einstein's equations to calculate the distance in metric space, comparing this with the prediction of Newton's methods. [18] She has investigated dark energy. [19]

Durrer was elected to Academia Net by the Swiss National Science Foundation in 2012. [1] She is a member of the committee of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics International Society on General Relative and Gravitation. [20] She has held visiting academic positions at University of California, Berkeley, Princeton University, University of Paris-Sud and Galileo Galilei Institute. [1]

Books

Awards and honours

Her awards and honours include;

Personal life

Durrer is married with three children. [1] She speaks German, English, French, and Swiss German. [1]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Big Bang</span> How the universe expanded from a hot, dense state

The Big Bang event is a physical theory that describes how the universe expanded from an initial state of high density and temperature. Various cosmological models of the Big Bang explain the evolution of the observable universe from the earliest known periods through its subsequent large-scale form. These models offer a comprehensive explanation for a broad range of observed phenomena, including the abundance of light elements, the cosmic microwave background (CMB) radiation, and large-scale structure. The overall uniformity of the Universe, known as the flatness problem, is explained through cosmic inflation: a sudden and very rapid expansion of space during the earliest moments. However, physics currently lacks a widely accepted theory of quantum gravity that can successfully model the earliest conditions of the Big Bang.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Physical cosmology</span> Branch of cosmology which studies mathematical models of the universe

Physical cosmology is a branch of cosmology concerned with the study of cosmological models. A cosmological model, or simply cosmology, provides a description of the largest-scale structures and dynamics of the universe and allows study of fundamental questions about its origin, structure, evolution, and ultimate fate. Cosmology as a science originated with the Copernican principle, which implies that celestial bodies obey identical physical laws to those on Earth, and Newtonian mechanics, which first allowed those physical laws to be understood.

In physical cosmology, cosmic inflation, cosmological inflation, or just inflation, is a theory of exponential expansion of space in the early universe. The inflationary epoch is believed to have lasted from 10−36 seconds to between 10−33 and 10−32 seconds after the Big Bang. Following the inflationary period, the universe continued to expand, but at a slower rate. The acceleration of this expansion due to dark energy began after the universe was already over 7.7 billion years old.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cosmic microwave background</span> Trace radiation from the early universe

The cosmic microwave background is microwave radiation that fills all space in the observable universe. It is a remnant that provides an important source of data on the primordial universe. With a standard optical telescope, the background space between stars and galaxies is almost completely dark. However, a sufficiently sensitive radio telescope detects a faint background glow that is almost uniform and is not associated with any star, galaxy, or other object. This glow is strongest in the microwave region of the radio spectrum. The accidental discovery of the CMB in 1965 by American radio astronomers Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson was the culmination of work initiated in the 1940s.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">General relativity</span> Theory of gravitation as curved spacetime

General relativity, also known as the general theory of relativity and Einstein's theory of gravity, is the geometric theory of gravitation published by Albert Einstein in 1915 and is the current description of gravitation in modern physics. General relativity generalises special relativity and refines Newton's law of universal gravitation, providing a unified description of gravity as a geometric property of space and time or four-dimensional spacetime. In particular, the curvature of spacetime is directly related to the energy and momentum of whatever matter and radiation are present. The relation is specified by the Einstein field equations, a system of second order partial differential equations.

Quantum gravity (QG) is a field of theoretical physics that seeks to describe gravity according to the principles of quantum mechanics. It deals with environments in which neither gravitational nor quantum effects can be ignored, such as in the vicinity of black holes or similar compact astrophysical objects, such as neutron stars as well as in the early stages of the universe moments after the Big Bang.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Accelerating expansion of the universe</span> Cosmological phenomenon

Observations show that the expansion of the universe is accelerating, such that the velocity at which a distant galaxy recedes from the observer is continuously increasing with time. The accelerated expansion of the universe was discovered during 1998 by two independent projects, the Supernova Cosmology Project and the High-Z Supernova Search Team, which both used distant type Ia supernovae to measure the acceleration. The idea was that as type Ia supernovae have almost the same intrinsic brightness, and since objects that are farther away appear dimmer, we can use the observed brightness of these supernovae to measure the distance to them. The distance can then be compared to the supernovae's cosmological redshift, which measures how much the universe has expanded since the supernova occurred; the Hubble law established that the farther an object is from us, the faster it is receding. The unexpected result was that objects in the universe are moving away from one another at an accelerated rate. Cosmologists at the time expected that recession velocity would always be decelerating, due to the gravitational attraction of the matter in the universe. Three members of these two groups have subsequently been awarded Nobel Prizes for their discovery. Confirmatory evidence has been found in baryon acoustic oscillations, and in analyses of the clustering of galaxies.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Big Crunch</span> Theoretical scenario for the ultimate fate of the universe

The Big Crunch is a hypothetical scenario for the ultimate fate of the universe, in which the expansion of the universe eventually reverses and the universe recollapses, ultimately causing the cosmic scale factor to reach zero, an event potentially followed by a reformation of the universe starting with another Big Bang. The vast majority of evidence indicates that this hypothesis is not correct. Instead, astronomical observations show that the expansion of the universe is accelerating rather than being slowed by gravity, suggesting that the universe is far more likely to end in heat death. However, there are new theories that suggest that a "Big Crunch-style" event could happen by the way of a Dark energy fluctuation, however this is still being debated amongst scientists.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Plasma cosmology</span> Non-standard model of the universe; emphasizes the role of ionized gases

Plasma cosmology is a non-standard cosmology whose central postulate is that the dynamics of ionized gases and plasmas play important, if not dominant, roles in the physics of the universe at interstellar and intergalactic scales. In contrast, the current observations and models of cosmologists and astrophysicists explain the formation, development, and evolution of large-scale structures as dominated by gravity.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert H. Dicke</span> American astronomer and physicist (1916–1997)

Robert Henry Dicke was an American astronomer and physicist who made important contributions to the fields of astrophysics, atomic physics, cosmology and gravity. He was the Albert Einstein Professor in Science at Princeton University (1975–1984).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Thanu Padmanabhan</span> Indian physicist and cosmologist (1957–2021)

Thanu Padmanabhan was an Indian theoretical physicist and cosmologist whose research spanned a wide variety of topics in gravitation, structure formation in the universe and quantum gravity. He published nearly 300 papers and reviews in international journals and ten books in these areas. He made several contributions related to the analysis and modelling of dark energy in the universe and the interpretation of gravity as an emergent phenomenon. He was a Distinguished Professor at the Inter-University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA) at Pune, India.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gravitational-wave astronomy</span> Branch of astronomy using gravitational waves

Gravitational-wave astronomy is an emerging field of science, concerning the observations of gravitational waves to collect relatively unique data and make inferences about objects such as neutron stars and black holes, events such as supernovae, and processes including those of the early universe shortly after the Big Bang.

In modern cosmological theory, diffusion damping, also called photon diffusion damping, is a physical process which reduced density inequalities (anisotropies) in the early universe, making the universe itself and the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB) more uniform. Around 300,000 years after the Big Bang, during the epoch of recombination, diffusing photons travelled from hot regions of space to cold ones, equalising the temperatures of these regions. This effect is responsible, along with baryon acoustic oscillations, the Doppler effect, and the effects of gravity on electromagnetic radiation, for the eventual formation of galaxies and galaxy clusters, these being the dominant large scale structures which are observed in the universe. It is a damping by diffusion, not of diffusion.

In physical cosmology and astronomy, dark energy is an unknown form of energy that affects the universe on the largest scales. Its primary effect is to drive the accelerating expansion of the universe. Assuming that the lambda-CDM model of cosmology is correct, dark energy is the dominant component of the universe, contributing 68% of the total energy in the present-day observable universe while dark matter and ordinary (baryonic) matter contribute 26% and 5%, respectively, and other components such as neutrinos and photons are nearly negligible. Dark energy's density is very low: 6×10−10 J/m3, much less than the density of ordinary matter or dark matter within galaxies. However, it dominates the universe's mass–energy content because it is uniform across space.

The Hoyle–Narlikar theory of gravity is a Machian and conformal theory of gravity proposed by Fred Hoyle and Jayant Narlikar that originally fits into the quasi steady state model of the universe.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Uroš Seljak</span>

Uroš Seljak is a Slovenian cosmologist and a professor of astronomy and physics at University of California, Berkeley. He is particularly well-known for his research in cosmology and approximate Bayesian statistical methods.

Marc Kamionkowski is an American theoretical physicist and currently the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Physics and Astronomy at Johns Hopkins University. His research interests include particle physics, dark matter, inflation, the cosmic microwave background and gravitational waves.

Lucas Lombriser is a Swiss National Science Foundation Professor at the Department of Theoretical Physics, University of Geneva. His research is in Theoretical Cosmology, Dark Energy, and Alternative Theories of Gravity. In 2020 and 2021 Lombriser proposed that the Hubble tension and other discrepancies between cosmological measurements imply significant evidence that we are living in a Hubble Bubble of 250 million light years in diameter which is 20% less dense than the cosmic average and lowers the locally measured cosmic microwave background temperature over its cosmic average. Previously, in 2019, he has proposed a solution to the cosmological constant problem from arguing that Newton's constant varies globally. In 2015 and 2016, Lombriser predicted the measurement of the gravitational wave speed with a neutron star merger and that this would rule out alternative theories of gravity as the cause of the late-time accelerated expansion of our Universe, a prediction that proved true with GW170817. Lombriser is a member of the Romansh-speaking minority in Switzerland.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tina Kahniashvili</span> Georgian physicist

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Jean-Philippe Uzan is a French cosmologist and directeur de recherche employed by the Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS).

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 "Prof. Ruth Durrer - AcademiaNet". www.academia-net.org. Retrieved 2019-04-28.
  2. 1 2 3 "Ruth Durrer | Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics - University of Geneva". cosmology.unige.ch. Retrieved 2019-04-28.
  3. ↑ "Ruth Durrer - The Mathematics Genealogy Project". www.genealogy.ams.org. Retrieved 2019-04-29.
  4. ↑ "Ruth Durrer". Institute for Advanced Study. Retrieved 2019-04-28.
  5. ↑ "Ruth's Homepage". fiteoweb.unige.ch. Retrieved 2019-04-28.
  6. ↑ "Ruth Durrer | Perimeter Institute". perimeterinstitute.ca. Retrieved 2019-04-28.
  7. ↑ Durrer, Ruth. (2008). The cosmic microwave background. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. ISBN   9780511424069. OCLC   297170401.
  8. ↑ "Ruth Durrer | SwissMAP". www.nccr-swissmap.ch. Retrieved 2019-04-28.
  9. ↑ "Cosmology and the cosmic microwave background | Cours de physique théorique". courses.ipht.cnrs.fr. Institut de physique théorique - IPhT Saclay . Retrieved 2019-04-28.
  10. ↑ "Ruth Durrer". www.colloquium.phys.ethz.ch. Retrieved 2019-04-28.
  11. ↑ "Testing General Relativity with Cosmological observations - Ruth Durrer". Media Hopper Create - The University of Edinburgh Media Platform. Retrieved 2019-04-28.
  12. ↑ Durrer, Ruth; Gangui, Alejandro; Sakellariadou, Mairi (1996-01-22). "Doppler Peaks in the Angular Power Spectrum of the Cosmic Microwave Background: A Fingerprint of Topological Defects". Physical Review Letters. 76 (4): 579–582. arXiv: astro-ph/9507035 . Bibcode:1996PhRvL..76..579D. doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.76.579. PMID   10061495. S2CID   16031907.
  13. 1 2 Yurke, Bernard; Turok, Neil; Durrer, Ruth; Chuang, Isaac (1991-03-15). "Cosmology in the Laboratory: Defect Dynamics in Liquid Crystals". Science. 251 (4999): 1336–1342. Bibcode:1991Sci...251.1336C. doi:10.1126/science.251.4999.1336. ISSN   0036-8075. PMID   17816188. S2CID   33894124.
  14. ↑ Durrer, Ruth (2006-02-10). "Is the Mystery of Cosmic Magnetic Fields Solved?". Science. 311 (5762): 787–788. doi:10.1126/science.1122395. ISSN   0036-8075. PMID   16469908. S2CID   1522770.
  15. ↑ "North of the Big Bang". www.newscientist.com. Retrieved 2019-04-28.
  16. ↑ "Members in the Media". www.aps.org. Retrieved 2019-04-28.
  17. ↑ Durrer, Ruth; Caprini, Chiara (2003-11-19). "Primordial magnetic fields and causality". Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics. 2003 (11): 010. arXiv: astro-ph/0305059 . Bibcode:2003JCAP...11..010D. doi:10.1088/1475-7516/2003/11/010. ISSN   1475-7516. S2CID   53768021.
  18. 1 2 "Spacetime and Gravitational Waves Yield a New View of the Universe". The Daily Galaxy. 2016-03-07. Retrieved 2019-04-28.
  19. ↑ Durrer Ruth (2011-12-28). "What do we really know about dark energy?". Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A: Mathematical, Physical and Engineering Sciences. 369 (1957): 5102–5114. arXiv: 1103.5331 . Bibcode:2011RSPTA.369.5102D. doi: 10.1098/rsta.2011.0285 . PMID   22084297.
  20. ↑ "AC2: Members | IUPAP: The International Union of Pure and Applied Physics". iupap.org. Retrieved 2019-04-29.
  21. ↑ Reviews of The Cosmic Microwave Background:
  22. ↑ "Ruth Durrer". Institute for Advanced Study. Retrieved 2019-04-28.
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