The Physics of Conformal Cyclic Cosmology

According to conformal cyclic cosmology (CCC), the currently conventional description of the entire history of the universe (but without an initial inflationary phase) provides but one cosmic aeon of an unending sequence of such aeons, where the future conformal infinity of each aeon joins essentially smoothly to the conformally stretched big bang of the next, across a spacelike 3-surface, referred to as a crossover 3-surface. Whereas in previous accounts of CCC a detailed description of the physics of crossover had been somewhat problematic, a novel idea is introduced here to show how crossover takes place naturally during a temporal period of the universe that is dominated by gravitational waves referred to here as a gravitational wave epoch (GWE). Accordingly, the geometry at the crossover surface is conformally smooth, except at a discrete set of points, referred to as Hawking points, each representing the final Hawking evaporation of the dominant black hole of a galactic cluster in the earlier aeon. It is shown here (using 2-spinor and twistor techniques) that there is a mass-energy conservation law that holds across the crossover surface, showing that the rise of temperature within such Hawking spots should be effectively determined by the total mass of the pre-crossover galactic cluster involved. This rise of temperature on the CMB map within Hawking spots is found to be in quantitative agreement with the masses of the largest galactic clusters observed in our own aeon what suggests that the physics in the previous aeon was, at least in the gravitational sector, similar to ours. A second observational feature, the actual angular diameter of the Hawking spots seen in our CMB, which is about twice what should have been expected, is associated to the presence of GWE just after the crossover and before the start of the usual cosmological epochs.