Andrei Linde

Andrei Dmitriyevich Linde (Андре́й Дми́триевич Ли́нде; born March 2, 1948) is a Russian-American theoretical physicist and the Harald Trap Friis Professor of Physics at Stanford University.

Linde is one of the main authors of the inflationary universe theory, as well as the theory of eternal inflation and inflationary multiverse.

He received his Bachelor of Science degree from Moscow State University.

During 1972 to 1976, David Kirzhnits and Andrei Linde developed a theory of cosmological phase transitions.

According to this theory, there was not much difference between weak, strong and electromagnetic interactions in the very early universe.

These interactions became different from each other only gradually, after the cosmological phase transitions which happened when the temperature in the expanding Universe's became sufficiently small.

In 1974, Linde found that the energy density of scalar fields that break the symmetry between different interactions can play the role of the vacuum energy density (the cosmological constant) in the Einstein equations.

In 1975, Linde was awarded a PhD from the Lebedev Physical Institute in Moscow.

Between 1976 and 1978, Linde demonstrated that the release of this energy during the cosmological phase transitions may be sufficient to heat up the universe.

These observations became the main ingredients of the first version of the inflationary universe theory proposed by Alan Guth in 1980.

This theory, now called the "old inflation theory", was based on the assumption that the universe was initially hot.

It then experienced the cosmological phase transitions and was temporarily stuck in a supercooled metastable vacuum state (a false vacuum).

The universe then expanded exponentially – "inflated" – until the false vacuum decayed and the universe became hot again.

This idea attracted much attention because it could provide a unique solution to many difficult problems of the standard Big Bang theory.

In particular, it could explain why the universe is so large and so uniform.

However, as Guth immediately realized, this scenario did not quite work as intended: the decay of the false vacuum would make the universe extremely inhomogeneous.

In 1981, during a seminar by Stephen Hawking on quantum gravity, Linde developed another version of inflationary theory that he called "new inflation".

He demonstrated that the bubbles not joining up (see page 138 of A Brief History of Time, Chapter 8) could be solved if there was a bubble that contained our region of the universe in it.

He also said that the phase transition must have taken place slowly inside the bubble.

This theory resolved the problems of the original model proposed by Guth while preserving most of its attractive features.

A few months later, a similar scenario was proposed by Andreas Albrecht and Paul Steinhardt which referenced Linde's paper.

Soon after that, it was realized that the new inflationary scenario also suffered from some problems.

Most of them arose because of the standard assumption that the early universe initially was very hot, and inflation occurred during the cosmological phase transitions.

The first version of the theory of reheating, which is essentially the theory of creation of matter in the universe, was developed in 1982 by Alexander Dolgov and Linde, and also by L.F. Abbott, Edward Farhi and Mark B. Wise.

In 1983, Linde abandoned some of the key principles of old and new inflation and proposed a more general inflationary theory, chaotic inflation.

Chaotic inflation occurs in a much broader class of theories, without any need for the assumption of initial thermal equilibrium.

The basic principles of this scenario became incorporated in most of the presently existing realistic versions of inflationary theory.

Chaotic inflation changed the way we think about the beginning of inflation.

Later on, Linde also proposed a possible modification of the way in which inflation may end, by developing the hybrid inflation scenario.

In that model, inflation ends due to the "waterfall" instability.

According to the inflationary theory, all elementary particles in the universe emerged after the end of inflation, in a process called reheating.

He worked at CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research) since 1989 and moved to the United States in 1990, where he became professor of physics at Stanford University.

In 1994, this theory was revised by L.A. Kofman, Linde and Alexei Starobinsky.

They have shown that the process of creation of matter after inflation may be much more efficient due to the effect of parametric resonance.

Perhaps the most far-reaching prediction made by Linde was related to what is now called the theory of inflationary multiverse, or string theory landscape.

Among the various awards he has received for his work on inflation, in 2002 he was awarded the Dirac Medal, along with Alan Guth of MIT and Paul Steinhardt of Princeton University.

In 2004 he received, along with Alan Guth, the Gruber Prize in Cosmology for the development of inflationary cosmology.

In 2012 he, along with Alan Guth, was an inaugural awardee of the Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics.

In 2014 he received the Kavli Prize in Astrophysics "for pioneering the theory of cosmic inflation", together with Alan Guth and Alexei Starobinsky.

In 2018 he received the Gamow Prize.