This dissertation explores two topics located in the intersection of quantum mechanics and cosmology. Entanglement harvesting is a phenomenon in which quantum entanglement can develop between the states of two Unruh-DeWitt detectors travelling through spacetime by way of mutual interaction with a scalar quantum field. I numerically explore entanglement harvesting of Unruh-DeWitt detectors in Minkowski space travelling with constant acceleration, generalizing previous analytical results which held only in a limiting case. Cosmic bubble collisions arise in inflationary cosmology as a mechanism to begin reheating at the end of inflation. I extend the previously proposed theory of boom and bust inflation which relies on the existence of a large extra dimension by exploring particular inflationary models in which reheating need not begin the first time that two bubble walls collide. This allows for a smaller lower bound on the size of the compact extra dimension in the boom and bust proposal.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:columbia.edu/oai:academiccommons.columbia.edu:10.7916/D8PV6XNT |
| Date | January 2017 |
| Creators | Brainerd, Andrew Eric |
| Source Sets | Columbia University |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Theses |
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