Events on Friday, February 26th, 2021
- Decoding and bootstrapping cosmological fluctuations
- Time: 2:00 pm - 3:00 pm
- Place: For zoom link, sign up at:
- Speaker: Guilherme Pimentel, Leiden University & University of Amsterdam
- Abstract: I will review our current understanding of the initial conditions of the universe, and describe what information is available from current and future measurements of cosmological correlation functions. Then I will describe a new method to compute and constrain the possible shapes of those correlation functions, assuming they were generated during inflation. This ``cosmological bootstrap” draws inspiration from the modern scattering amplitudes program in flat space, as well as the conformal bootstrap of phase transitions. After discussing primordial scalar fluctuations, I will also explain how the consistent propagation of gravitational waves imposes further constraints on the structure of spinning primordial correlators.
- Host: Lars Aalsma