Joint cosmology seminar at MIT:

Tuesday, April 26, 2016, 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 and the quantum measurement problem

Dhrubo Jyoti
Dartmouth

Abstract:

Perhaps the most interesting aspect of inflationary paradigm is that it traces the origin of structure in the Universe to quantum zero-point fluctuations. However, the mechanism assumes a "quantum non-demolition measurement." In this talk, I will propose a new solution to this cosmological quantum measurement problem. Our solution is an effective collapse mechanism arising from two-body self-interaction of Fourier modes of cosmological perturbations, inspired by weakly-interacting Bose gases, to be contrasted with traditional fundamental modifications to the Schrodinger equation. By appropriately setting the coupling between modes, we recover the standard (nearly) scale-invariant power spectrum of cosmological perturbations. This talk is based on arXiv:1602.01216 [gr-qc].