Abstract

The Universe is fundamentally quantum and statistical, a many-paths/many-worlds random-field story that pervades all discussions in cosmic theory. This talk uses “Cosmic Information Theory and Analysis” (CITA) as a unifying theme to explore our ideas of how the Universe morphed from a smooth Hubble-patch within a vast and wild probability landscape into the intricate evolving complexity of the cosmic web we observe. I will discuss the information content of cosmic parameter measurements, with applications to acceleration trajectories of late-inflation Dark Energy and of the early-inflaton. I will also talk about how we try to probe the two great entropy (Shannon information) generation epochs. The first, from which almost all of the entropy of the universe is thought to arise, is from post-inflation preheating through the “shock-in-times” of highly non-equilibrium interacting fields. The second, from which most of the entropy in electrons and baryons arises, is from crashing density waves as nonlinearities in the cosmic web grow hierarchically, through the more conventional shocks (in-space). The impact on cluster observables of non-thermal cluster entropies, in dark matter, and in gas pressure and density clumping and in internal bulk flows, will be used as an example of the latter.