New model to analyse early universe

A team of researchers has developed a new model to chart the first minutes after the Big Bang for fundamental insights.

The newly-developed, more accurate computer code simulates conditions during the first few minutes of cosmological evolution to model the role of neutrinos, nuclei and other particles in shaping the early universe.

Anticipating precision cosmological data from the next generation of extremely large telescopes, the BURST code developed by scientists from Los Alamos National Laboratory and University of California San Diego, promises to open up new avenues for investigating existing puzzles of cosmology, according to physicist Mark Paris.

Paris noted that these include the nature and origin of visible matter and the properties of the more mysterious 'dark matter' and 'dark radiation.'

The code allows physicists to exploit the early universe as a laboratory to study the effect of fundamental particles present in the early universe, Paris explains, adding that this work in neutrino cosmology allows the study of the microscopic, quantum nature of fundamental particles - the basic, subatomic building blocks of nature, by simulating the universe at its largest, cosmological scale.

Physicist George Fuller said that their "self-consistent" approach, achieved for the first time by simultaneously describing all the particles involved, increases the precision of our calculations. This allows them to investigate exotic fundamental particles that are currently the subject of intense theoretical speculation.

The new theoretical work is published in Physical Review D.