Image:Inflationary horizon plot.svg

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[edit] Summary

This image is a log-plot, showing the scale factor of the universe (normalised so it is equal to one today) against physical length. The two curves are the Hubble radius (solid line) of the universe from cosmic inflation, through radiation domination to matter domination to today, and the physical wavelength of a fiducial perturbation mode (dashed line). The perturbation mode goes with the scale factor and so is a 45 degree line on this plot. The plot illustrates how the constant Hubble radius during cosmic inflation allows perturbation modes to come inside the horizon in the early universe. If the radiation domination line were continued indefinitely into the past, so there was no cosmic inflation, the mode would never reenter the horizon and one would anticipate chaotic initial conditions for the universe.

All the vertices etc should be correctly located, within an order of magnitude.

I created this work in Adobe Illustrator.

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I, the copyright holder of this work, hereby publish it under the following licenses: Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. Subject to disclaimers. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike license versions 2.5, 2.0, and 1.0. You may select the license of your choice.

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