Smolin Cosmology as a problem in critical phenomena英文电子书.pdf

Cosmology as a problem in critical p h e n o m e n a Lee Smolin Center for Gravitational Physics and Geometry, Department of Physics Pennsylvania State University University Park, Pa16802-6360, USA smolin@phys.psu.edu * permanent address and School of Natural Sciences, Institute for Advanced Study Princeton, New Jersey, 08540, USA Abstract. Several problems in cosmology and astrophysics are described in which critical phenomena of various types may play a role. These include the organi- zation of the disks of spiral galaxies, various aspects of the problem of structure formation in cosmology, the problem of the selection of initial conditions and parameters in particle physics and cosmology and the problem of recovering the classical limit from non-perturbative formulations of quantum gravity. A measure of complexity which is suggested by these applications, but which may also have application to other problems, is described. 1 I n t r o d u c t i o n Until recently, most attempts to construct theories of physics and cosmology have begun with the point of view that the universe is, in its fundamentals, not very complicated. Unfortunately, it seems that the world often frustrates our desire to understand it simply: ~2 1 must originally have been very finely tuned originally to be close to one now, but the best evidence is that it is now in fact measurably less than one [1, 2]. The neutrinos are very light compared to every other mass scale, but there is evidence that they are not exactly massless [3], while the proton and neutron h