Power spectrum in effective theories for inflation

Tuesday, September 10th

Mauricio Gamonal San Martin, Penn State
Primordial power spectrum in effective theories for inflation>
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By Jorge Pullin, LSU.

The main achievement of inflationary cosmology is how it reproduces the inhomogeneities of the Universe using a relatively simple model. You put a quantum field in its simplest state -the vacuum-, evolve it through inflation (a period of exponential expansion of the Universe) and voila, the quantum state acquires non-trivial features that leave an imprint on the Universe that matches beautifully the inhomogeneities we observe in the cosmic microwave background (CMB). 

Beyond that simple story, people have proposed slightly different models for inflation to address several issues. In particular, if one considers quantum gravity further modifications are possible.While quantum gravity effects are typically too weak if inflation lasted too long, they could play a role in setting different initial conditions if a pre-inflationary epoch occurred, for example by preparing an excited vacuum state for the quantum fields. This is exciting because it means that quantum gravity effects could leave observable imprints in the observations of the CMB.

This talk presented a unified treatment of a large group of models of inflation and their potential observable imprints on the CMB, including those stemming from loop quantum gravity and spinfoams.