If you missed this event, you can see a recording at:
https://youtu.be/PcCWLuO2zvI
This lecture ("Schrödinger's Alarming Phenomenon") was recorded on October 22, 2020 as part of the UofSC Department of Physics and Astronomy's weekly colloquium series.
Dr. Rocky Kolb is the Arthur Holly Compton Distinguished Service Professor at the University of Chicago (Chicago, IL) as well as the Director of the Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics.
Abstract: The big bang is a laboratory to explore the properties of particles that cannot be created in terrestrial laboratories. In addition to thermal processes, there is another source of cosmological particle production. In 1939, Erwin Schrödinger pointed out that particle-antiparticle pairs could be created merely by the violent expansion of space. The spontaneous appearance of particles from the vacuum so disturbed Schrödinger that he referred to it as an "alarming" phenomenon. The phenomenon is now thought to be the origin of density fluctuations produced in inflation as well as a background of gravitational waves. Gravitational particle production is a rich phenomenon, which continues to be explored.