A New Census of the Universe's Entropy

Fuente: arXiv
Guardado en:
Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Profumo, Stefano, Colombo-Murphy, Liam, Huckabee, Gabriela, Svensson, Maya Diaz, Garg, Stuti, Kollipara, Ishan, Weber, Alison
Formato: Preprint
Publicado: 2024
Materias:
Acceso en línea:
Etiquetas: Agregar Etiqueta
Sin Etiquetas, Sea el primero en etiquetar este registro!
_version_ 1866914047822135296
author Profumo, Stefano
Colombo-Murphy, Liam
Huckabee, Gabriela
Svensson, Maya Diaz
Garg, Stuti
Kollipara, Ishan
Weber, Alison
author_facet Profumo, Stefano
Colombo-Murphy, Liam
Huckabee, Gabriela
Svensson, Maya Diaz
Garg, Stuti
Kollipara, Ishan
Weber, Alison
contents The question of what is the total entropy of the universe, how it compares to the maximal entropy of de Sitter space, and how it is distributed across the universe's components, bears considerable importance for a number of reasons. Here, we first update the computation of the entropy associated with various sectors of the observed universe, including in the diffuse cosmic and late-time gamma-ray and neutrino backgrounds, in baryonic matter both in diffuse components, in stars and stellar remnants, and in cosmic rays; we then update, crucially, the estimate of entropy in stellar-mass and super-massive black holes, whose abundance and mass function has come into increasingly sharp definition with recent observations and with the rapidly growing statistics of black-hole-black-hole mergers observed with gravity wave detectors. We also provide a new, corrected estimate of the potential entropy associated with a stochastic gravitational wave background, with dark sector radiations, and with several dark matter models. Finally, we utilize the similarly recently updated constraints on the abundance of hypothetical primordial black holes - black holes, that is, of non-stellar origin - to assess the maximal amount entropy they could store. We find that if supermassive primordial black holes exist, they can dominate the entropy budget of the universe consistently with current constraints on their abundance and mass function, to a level potentially not distant from the posited entropy associated with the cosmic event horizon of de Sitter spacetime. The same conclusion holds for certain dark sector models featuring a large number of dark degrees of freedom.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2412_11282
institution arXiv
publishDate 2024
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle A New Census of the Universe's Entropy
Profumo, Stefano
Colombo-Murphy, Liam
Huckabee, Gabriela
Svensson, Maya Diaz
Garg, Stuti
Kollipara, Ishan
Weber, Alison
Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics
General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
High Energy Physics - Phenomenology
High Energy Physics - Theory
The question of what is the total entropy of the universe, how it compares to the maximal entropy of de Sitter space, and how it is distributed across the universe's components, bears considerable importance for a number of reasons. Here, we first update the computation of the entropy associated with various sectors of the observed universe, including in the diffuse cosmic and late-time gamma-ray and neutrino backgrounds, in baryonic matter both in diffuse components, in stars and stellar remnants, and in cosmic rays; we then update, crucially, the estimate of entropy in stellar-mass and super-massive black holes, whose abundance and mass function has come into increasingly sharp definition with recent observations and with the rapidly growing statistics of black-hole-black-hole mergers observed with gravity wave detectors. We also provide a new, corrected estimate of the potential entropy associated with a stochastic gravitational wave background, with dark sector radiations, and with several dark matter models. Finally, we utilize the similarly recently updated constraints on the abundance of hypothetical primordial black holes - black holes, that is, of non-stellar origin - to assess the maximal amount entropy they could store. We find that if supermassive primordial black holes exist, they can dominate the entropy budget of the universe consistently with current constraints on their abundance and mass function, to a level potentially not distant from the posited entropy associated with the cosmic event horizon of de Sitter spacetime. The same conclusion holds for certain dark sector models featuring a large number of dark degrees of freedom.
title A New Census of the Universe's Entropy
topic Cosmology and Nongalactic Astrophysics
General Relativity and Quantum Cosmology
High Energy Physics - Phenomenology
High Energy Physics - Theory
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2412.11282