Holography of Little Inflation

Understand

For several crucial microseconds of its early history, the Universe consisted of a Quark-Gluon Plasma.

• As it cooled during this era, it traced out a trajectory in the quark matter phase diagram.
• The form taken by this trajectory is not known with certainty, but is of great importance: it determines, for example, whether the cosmic plasma passed through a first-order phase change during the transition to the hadron era, as has recently been suggested by advocates of the "Little Inflation" model.
• Just before this transition, the plasma was strongly coupled and therefore can be studied by holographic techniques.