A Cosmological Calculation Suggesting a Threshold for New Physics

A calculation by E.D.Jones of the cosmological mass scale for the phase transition from pre-geometric to physical description as about 5 Tev could be interpreted as a prediction of an effective threshold for novel physical effects in particle-particle collisions. PACS numbers: 95.35.+d, 98.80 Qc, 98.80 Bp To be submitted to Physical Review D as a brief report ∗Work supported by Department of Energy contract DE–AC03–76SF00515. E.D.Jones [1, 2] has sketched a compelling cosmological scenario resting on basic physical principles. Starting from the fact that the validity of current physics is bounded, at best, by the Planck length and the Planck density, he assumes only scaling laws are needed to take the universe from some pre-geometric, pre-physical situation by an “extremely rapid” transition to a much less dense phase in which space, time, particles and temperature carry their usual meaning. He and we refer to the end of this transition as thermalization. The only parameter which is unknown is the “number of Plancktons” — a Planckton is a Planck’s mass worth of mass-energy at the Planck density and temperature — with which, in a poetic sense, our universe “starts out”. An initial presentation of Jones’ ideas by Noyes, et. al. is available[2], with the caveat that Jones’ own views could differ in ways that have not yet been spelled out. What makes Jones’ work so exciting is that with this minimal input he is able to show that a currently acceptable value of ΩΛ = 0.7 for the cosmological constant density normalized to the critical density implies that the mass scale at which thermalization becomes meaningful is about 5 Tev. In this paper we present a calculation leading to this result and discuss some of the implications. That an explicitly gravitational effect has such a low mass scale is exciting because 5 Tev is well within the energy range that can be explored once the large hadron collider (LHC) comes on line. In an alternative approach Thomas[3, 4] has shown that in 10 dimensional string theories with 6 compactified dimensions and an appropriate choice of the string coupling constant, black hole effects in hadron-hadron collisions could become observable at energies as low as 1 Tev, and would rapidly come to dominate over conventional scattering and particle production at energies above this threshold. If the threshold is as low as 4 Tev, effects might also become detectable in very high energy neutrino-induced, lateral cosmic ray showers[5] when experimental programs currently under construction collect enough data. In this paper we argue that Jones’ cosmological calculation might provide us with an estimate of the energy scale for significant elementary particle gravitational effects in our universe. Whether this might signal the threshold explored by Thomas and others, or some even more fundamental reason to question the adequacy of conventional physics at this mass scale is briefly discussed below.