URL: https://physikseminar.desy.de/zeuthen/past_colloquia/colloquia_in_2015/october_7_2015/@@siteview
Breadcrumb Navigation
Testing Cosmic Inflation
Subir Sarkar (Oxford | Kopenhagen)
Seminar room 3, 15:00
The detection by the BICEP2 telescope of a "B-mode" polarisation signal in the cosmic microwave background was hailed as direct evidence that the early universe underwent a period of inflation. The signal was attributed to inflationary gravitational waves with an amplitude of 20% of the observed scalar density perturbations which have seeded the growth of large-scale structure.
However subsequently the signal was found to more likely be foreground emission from our Galaxy. It is now clear that this 'smoking gun’ for inflation will be a harder target than was presumed earlier. There is another promising probe however, viz. searches for features in the power spectrum of the scalar perturbations, using both CMB and large-scale structure data. I will review the status of these attempts to experimentally determine how our universe began.
