Total mass of a patch of a matter-dominated Friedmann-Robertson-Walker universe
Author(s)
Geller, Sarah (Sarah R.)
DownloadFull printable version (1.917Mb)
Other Contributors
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Physics.
Advisor
Alan H. Guth.
Terms of use
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
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).
Date issued
2017Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of PhysicsPublisher
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Keywords
Physics.