1998/11/24 by J. W. Moffat, Moffat, J. W.
Computer Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Mathematical Theories and Applications #Astrophysics (astro-ph) #Computational Physics and Python Applications #Cosmology and Gravitation Theories #FOS: Physical sciences #General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology (gr-qc) #High Energy Physics - Theory (hep-th) #astro-ph #gr-qc #hep-th
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.astro-ph/9811390
17 pages latex file. Typos corrected. To be published in a volume dedicated to Hagen Kleinert on the occasion of his 60th birthday by World Scientific, Singapore
openalex publication_date 1998/11/24 · arxiv created 2000/12/07 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
In earlier published work, it was proposed that light speed was larger in the early universe by 30 orders of magnitude compared to its presently observed value. This change in the speed of light is associated with a spontaneous breaking of local Lorentz invariance in the early Universe, associated with a first order phase transition at a critical time t=tc. This solves the horizon problem, leads to a mechanism of monopole suppression in cosmology and can resolve the flatness problem. it also offers the potential of solving the cosmological constant problem. After the critical time tc, local Lorentz invariance is restored and light travels at its presently measured speed. We investigate the field equations in the spontaneously broken phase and study further the flatness problem and the cosmological constant problem. The entropy is shown to undergo a large increase as the light velocity goes through a phase transition. A scale invariant prediction for microwave background fluctuations originating at the time of the phase transition is discussed.