Cosmology: 5 Needed Breakthroughs -- Robert Brandenberger

[Today's guest in our ongoing feature '5 Breakthroughs' is Robert Brandenberger, Canada Research Chair and Professor of Physics of McGill University, where he taught and conducted research since 2004. Before that he was a professor at Brown University for about 18 years.

In his long career spanning about a quarter of a century (He received his PhD from Harvard University in 1983; Thesis "Topics in Quantum Field Theory and Cosmology'), Prof. Brandenberger made crucial contributions in various important subfields of cosmology (link to a list of publications).

His current research interests cover a wide spectrum of topics in cosmology and related fields and include
(A) Conceptual problems in inflationary universe cosmology, in particular, trans-Planckian problem for cosmology,
(B) Theory of cosmological perturbations, in particular, back reaction problems, evolution of perturbations in nonsingular cosmologies, and parametric amplification of fluctuations during reheating,
(C) Superstring cosmology, in particular, string gas cosmology and structure formation, mechanisms for obtaining inflation from string theory, resolution of cosmological singularities in string theory, dualities and brane gases in the early universe,
(D) Topological defects in cosmology, in particular, topological defects and Baryogenesis, topological defects and direct signatures, stabilization of embedded defects by plasma effects,
(E) Nonequilibrium processes, in particular, parametric resonance during reheating in inflationary cosmology, nonequilibrium production of topological defects,
(F) Particle-Astrophysics, in particular, constraining physics beyond the Standard Model using cosmology, new mechanisms for CP violation and Baryogenesis,
(G) Large-scale structure, in particular, use of topological statistics to analyze large-scale redshift surveys, studies of weak gravitational lensing maps using new statistics.
(H) Formation of structure in the early universe, in particular, coupling of adiabatic and entropy fluctuations in multi-field, and cosmological models.

In March, 2008 issue of 'Physics Today', Prof. Brandenberger presented an excellent account of current status of inflationary cosmology in his article 'Alternatives to cosmological inflation' (article link here).

Prof. Brandenberger is a Fellow of the American Physical Society. He was an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow in years 1988-1992 and received the Outstanding Junior Investigator award of Department of Energy in years 1988-1991.

It gives us great pleasure to present this list of 5 most important breakthroughs that Prof. Brandenberger would like to see in Cosmology.
-- 2Physics.com ]

Breakthrough 1:
Solution of the (old) cosmological constant problem: why is the cosmological constant not given by the cut off scale of relativistic quantum field theory?

Breakthrough 2:
Solution of the new cosmological constant problem: why is there an apparent cosmological constant which is beginning to dominate the evolution of the universe at the current cosmological epoch?

Breakthrough 3:
Resolution of the cosmological singularity: without resolving the cosmological singularity a cosmological model will always be incomplete. Standard Big Bang cosmology had to be replaced by a new early universe cosmology because of this problem. The current paradigm, scalar field-driven inflationary cosmology still suffers from this problem and is therefore incomplete.

Breakthrough 4:
Non-perturbative understanding of superstring theory: will lead to a new cosmological model of the very early universe which will either yield a convincing realization of inflationary cosmology or else to an alternative model.

Breakthrough 5:
An observational discovery of a cosmic superstring: this will cement the link between string theory and cosmology and will also lead to a new theory of the very early universe.