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Andrei Linde
1982· Person
ProvenTested many times; part of working physics.
Andrei Linde (born 1948), Russian-American physicist at Stanford and a founder of modern inflation theory: slow roll, chaotic and eternal inflation.
See it on the Science map →How it works
Trained at Moscow's Lebedev Institute, Linde argued in 1972, with David Kirzhnits, that the hot early universe passed through phase transitions, like water freezing. In 1981 he found the fix for Guth's stalled model: a gentle slope that lets inflation end smoothly. In 1983 his chaotic inflation dropped the need for any special phase transition, and in 1986 he described a self-reproducing, eternally inflating universe. He moved to Stanford in 1990 and helped build string theory's landscape (KKLT, 2003).
Why it matters
He made inflation workable and general, and more than anyone made the inflationary multiverse a serious subject of physics.
How the work held up
Planck's ripple data support the slow-roll framework he co-founded, though they disfavor his simplest 1983 chaotic model. He shared the 2004 Gruber and 2014 Kavli Prizes with Guth.
Still a mystery
His eternal, self-reproducing universe is untested. In 2014 a viral video caught his joy at BICEP2's apparent detection of inflation's waves; the signal proved to be dust.
Connections (2)
▸Andrei Linde fixed old inflation with Slow roll: energy rolling down a hillWell supported
The relationship
Linde saw that if the energy hill near the false vacuum were very flat, the field inside a newly formed bubble would keep inflating while rolling slowly down. One bubble alone would grow far larger than our observable universe, so bubbles never needed to merge. Inflation would end smoothly, releasing its energy evenly.
How the link was found
Andrei Linde in Moscow, submitted October 1981, published in Physics Letters B in February 1982. Andreas Albrecht and Paul Steinhardt at the University of Pennsylvania reached the same answer independently (April 1982). It became 'new inflation'.
Is it proven?
The fix works mathematically. But the specific 1982 models, tied to grand unified theories, predicted ripples far too strong and were dropped; the slow-roll principle survived in later models that fit Planck.
Open questions and mysteries
Why the hill should be so flat was unexplained then and still is. Linde himself soon moved on to chaotic inflation, which needs no false vacuum at all.
▸Andrei Linde developed Eternal inflation and bubble universesSpeculative
The relationship
In 1983 Linde proposed chaotic inflation: the field starts with random values in different patches, and wherever it starts high enough, that patch inflates. In 1986 he showed quantum jumps keep driving some patches higher, so inflation reproduces itself forever, branching into domains that might even have different laws. He called it a self-reproducing universe.
How the link was found
Andrei Linde, 'Eternally existing self-reproducing chaotic inflationary universe', Physics Letters B, 1986. In 1994, with his son Dmitri Linde and Arthur Mezhlumian, he pictured it in computer simulations as ever-growing mountain ranges of field values.
Is it proven?
It is a mathematical consequence of chaotic inflation plus quantum jumps. Nothing observable confirms it; regions beyond our horizon cannot be seen.
Open questions and mysteries
Linde saw the whole as a stationary, possibly beginningless universe; later theorems suggest a beginning is still needed. How to compare probabilities across endless domains is unsolved.