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Colloquium - Marc Kamionkowski (Johns Hopkins University) - Inflation: There's Room at the Bottom

Marc Kamionkowski
April 21, 2015
4:00PM - 5:00PM
1080 Physics Research Building - Smith Seminar Room - reception at 3:45pm in the Atrium

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Add to Calendar 2015-04-21 16:00:00 2015-04-21 17:00:00 Colloquium - Marc Kamionkowski (Johns Hopkins University) - Inflation: There's Room at the Bottom The idea that the Universe underwent a period of superluminal expansion, known as inflation, has gained considerable traction with the advent of precise measurements over the past decade+.  One of the key predictions of inflation is a spectrum of primordial density fluctuations that remains nearly scale-invariant over 15-25 decades in distance scale.  The near scale-invariance of primordial perturbations over the roughly 3 decades over which the spectrum has been measured so far remains one of the theory's greatest successes. Still, it is interesting to think whether that spectrum can be measured over the remaining 12-22 decades, all of it at distance scales smaller than those that can be probed by the cosmic microwave background or galaxy surveys.  I will discuss some ideas for accessing these smaller scales.  1080 Physics Research Building - Smith Seminar Room - reception at 3:45pm in the Atrium Department of Physics physics@osu.edu America/New_York public

The idea that the Universe underwent a period of superluminal expansion, known as inflation, has gained considerable traction with the advent of precise measurements over the past decade+.  One of the key predictions of inflation is a spectrum of primordial density fluctuations that remains nearly scale-invariant over 15-25 decades in distance scale.  The near scale-invariance of primordial perturbations over the roughly 3 decades over which the spectrum has been measured so far remains one of the theory's greatest successes. Still, it is interesting to think whether that spectrum can be measured over the remaining 12-22 decades, all of it at distance scales smaller than those that can be probed by the cosmic microwave background or galaxy surveys.  I will discuss some ideas for accessing these smaller scales.