Joint cosmology seminar at MIT:

Wednesday, September 25, 2019, 2:30 pm
Cosman Seminar Room
Center for Theoretical Physics
Building 6C, Room 6C-442
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Refreshments at 2:00 in the same room

Inflation as a cosmological collider

Xingang Chen
Harvard

Abstract:

Inflation may be viewed as a particle collider during which particles with masses up to the Hubble scale of inflation are created spontaneously. The energy scale is much higher than any terrestrial colliders can possibly achieve. We study how these particles leave their imprints in the density perturbations, so that we may read their spectra and interactions by studying the distribution of the contents of our universe in large scales. Some of these imprints also directly record the scale factor of the primordial universe as a function of time, serving as a direct evidence for the inflation scenario.