Total mass of a patch of a matter-dominated Friedmann-Robertson-Walker universe
Name
1006427831-MIT.pdf
Description
Full printable version
Size
1.92 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
12a078b1a055a7b407ec13dfa733b804
Author(s)
Geller, Sarah (Sarah R.)
Advisor(s)
Alan H. Guth.
Date Issued
2017
Publisher
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Abstract
In this thesis, I have addressed the question of how to calculate the total relativistic mass for a patch of a spherically-symmetric matter-dominated spacetime of negative curvature. This calculation provides the open-universe analogue to a similar calculation first proposed by Zel'dovich in 1962. I consider a finite, spherically-symmetric (SO(3)) spatial region of a Friedmann-Robertson-Walker (FRW) universe surrounded with a vacuum described by the Schwarzschild metric. Provided that the patch of FRW spacetime is glued along its boundary to a Schwarzschild spacetime in a sufficiently smooth manner, the result is a spatial region of FRW which transitions smoothly to an asymptotically flat exterior region such that spherical symmetry is preserved throughout. I demonstrate that this mass diverges as the size of the patch is taken to include the entire universe, and discuss the intuition provided by a classical approximation to the total mass using the formalism of Newtonian Cosmology.
Description
Thesis: S.M., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Physics, 2017.
Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (page 49).
Subjects
Physics.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics
Terms of Use
MIT theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed, downloaded, or printed from this source but further reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission.
Persistent DSpace Link
