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Paul Steinhardt, Ph.D., has done research in areas that span problems
in cosmology, astrophysics, particle physics and condensed matter physics.
In cosmology, his work has focused on issues at the interface between
fundamental physics and astrophysics. The mechanisms for driving inflationary
expansion in the early universe, the connection between inflation and
elementary particles, and the observational consequences of inflation
are subjects of long-standing interest. Recent advances in string theory
and M-theory suggest that the observable universe may lie in a three dimensional
surface, a brane or domain wall, embedded in a higher dimensional space.
His research group is actively exploring the cosmological consequences
of this brane-world picture for the causal structure of space-time, for
the cosmological constant, and for quintessence. Among his publications
are "A cyclic model of the universe," P. Steinhardt and N. Turok, Science
296, 1436 (2002); "From Big Crunch to Big Bang," J. Khoury, B. Ovrut,
N. Seiberg, P. Steinhardt and N. Turok, Phys. Rev. D 65, 086007 (2002);
and "The Ekpyrotic Universe: Colliding Branes and the Origin of the Hot
Big Bang," J. Khoury, B. Ovrut, P. Steinhardt and N. Turok, Phys. Rev.
D64, 123522 (2001). Information on this topic is also available at Dr.
Steinhardt's webpage.
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