Inflationary magnetic fields spoil the homogeneity and isotropy of the Universe

by Ruth Durrer (University of Geneva)

Monday 26 Mar 2012, 14:00 → 15:00 Europe/Zurich

Cubotron 727 (EPFL)

I shall show that magnetic fields generated during inflation, if they are sufficient to provide the seeds for the observed large scale fields in galaxies, clusters and voids, generically lead to large metric fluctuations during the subsequent radiation era. The ratio of the Weyl tensor generated from magnetic fields during inflation to the Ricci
tensor grows in the radiation dominated era to become larger than unity. This is in flagrant contradiction with the homogeneity and isotropy of the observed Universe