McGill.CA / Science / Department of Physics
Informal Pizza Seminar

De Sitter space and string theory

Djordje Minic

USC

Current astronomical observations suggest that the universe is well approximated by a world with a positive cosmological constant - de Sitter space. Semiclassical gravity predicts that de Sitter space has a finite entropy. Even though de Sitter space does not appear as a classical string theory background, we suggest a picture for Euclidean de Sitter space in string theory, and argue that de Sitter entropy can be understood as the number of degrees of freedom in a quantum mechanical dual.

Wednesday, April 25th 2001, 13:15
Ernest Rutherford Physics Building, room 305