Mark Jackson (University of Paris): Effective Field Theory in Inflation
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Europe/Budapest
Tanácsterem
Tanácsterem
Description
Although the observed CMB is at very low energy, it encodes
ultra high-energy physics in spatial variations of the photon
temperature and polarization fluctuations. This effect is believed to
be dominated by the initial quantum state of the Universe. I will
describe the first theoretical tools by which to construct such a
state from fundamental physics. One can then use this technique to
reliably calculate corrections to the power spectrum, non-Gaussianity,
etc from high-energy physics. We may soon be able to compare these
predictions against experiment, allowing one to rule out classes of
quantum gravity models. Now is the critical time to undertake such
investigations, with a number of ongoing and planned experiments such
as Planck and CMBPol/Inflation Probe poised to collect a wealth of
precision data.
