This award will enable Dr. Edward W. Kolb of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and other members of the Fermilab Astrophysics Group to collaborate with Prof. Katsuhiko Sato of the University of Tokyo, Japan, and other Japanese scientists over a period of two years. They will perform a systematic study of the expanding universe model and its space-time structures, including aspects of the universe's creation and evolution. The purpose of this research is to study the cosmological effects of the breaking of the natural symmetry which, it is assumed, was manifest in the very earliest stages of the existence of the universe. At high energies the laws of physics have a higher degree of symmetry than is achieved at present in nature; therefore experience gained in high-energy physics is relevant to this research. This experience of the Fermilab researchers and their Japanese co-workers will be applied to theoretical studies of dynamical systems with extra dimensions, which may describe the universe in its early stages; of cosmic strings, and their influence on the creation of particles; of anisotropic universes and quantum cosmology; of quark-hadron transitions in the early universe; and of the failure of conservation of baryon numbers. Close U.S.-Japanese cooperation made possible in this program will facilitate the completion of many of these projects, which are too comprehensive to be tackled by any single group.
