Baryogenesis refers to the overproduction of matter as opposed to anti-matter. Before that time there was baryonic matter in the form of quark-gluon plasma, and this formed just after inflation at 10^-37 seconds or so.
A radiation dominated universe existed for many thousands of years, but that just means that its energy density was greater than that of matter, not that the energy density was sufficient to cause pair production.
Yes, I know what baryogenesis is, it is the only pre nucleosynthesis phase I could remember a name for though
. I should have just said pre inflation instead of pre baryogenesis. I was referring to before it though, not during. I was meaning to use it as an example of a phase when matter existed but was still profoundly radiation dominated (really "bright"
). Hence before would have had even greater photon density when the quarks themselves were created.
Also know what a radiation dominated universe is, but my point was that the models we currently use (up to a point) have radiation contribution that increases in the past, and was much higher before inflation. (seems silly to use the word much there.. I ate much too much pizza last night too... but that doesn't mean a trillion trillion slices of pizza.
) I did not mean to imply the radiation domination phase was short or that it meant immediate creation of matter, but it ended due to a lack of density allowing the condensation into matter and an increase in its free path (separation of forces). It seemed to me you were implying that given enough energy density of radiation matter creation is unavoidable (it may be) and that this matter creation would cap off the density.
In the extreme past radiation energy density increases greatly as one moves backwards. As one approaches singularity there is no fundamental point were a nearly pure radiation universe will become "matter" or the density of energy would peak (that I am aware of, please point me towards something to the contrary). I would consider this that there is no logical max to "brightness" in the terms of radiation energy density. It can always increase given rather ridiculous conditions.
Mind you, given a universe so dense that a quark could not exist our physics is not sufficient to describe what "matter" might have looked like. I just don't think anyone knows enough about these conditions to say one way or another if there is logical peak to the density. If one actually were to observe the big bang I'd expect them to observe near infinite photon density as the singularity is approached (whether it was ever even a singularity or not doesn't make a difference). I'm sure there exist some quark stars around, but even at some point a quark cannot exist given sufficient pressure (hence black holes). What matter would have existed in these situations when the entire universe was on the orders of density not seen outside a collapsing neutron star today? I'm quite curious.
That is all just a round about way of saying that it is my understanding that the universe began as almost purely radiation dominated and at nearly infinite density. Hence, it is "possible" to reach any level of brightness desired if it is defined as photon density. All that besides the stellar evolution physics that I do understand pretty well that prevent something brighter than the super massive stars from ever being observed.
Edit: I apologize for being all over the place.. But I suppose my assumption is that we can define something like a photon during the grand unification epoch... But I suppose this might be meaningless. As energy density increases all of the forces would likely merge. In this kind of configuration I don't suppose a photon (gauge boson for electromagnetism) would really have a meaning. Kind of a moot point. So while energy density could reach nearly anything up to the plank epoch where quantum gravity (and theories we don't yet have) would dominate I'm not sure if saying photon density increases would be valid at all.
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