Talks

General relativity is invariant under diffeomorphisms, and

excitations of the metric corresponding to diffeomorphisms

are nonphysical.  In the presence of a boundary, though --

including a boundary at infinity -- the Einstein-Hilbert

action with suitable boundary terms is no longer fully

invariant, and certain diffeomorphisms are promoted to

physical degrees of freedom.  After briefly describing how

this happens in (2+1)-dimensional AdS gravity, I will

report on work in progress on the asymptotically flat case,

for which the newly dynamical diffeomorphisms are the

superrotations, and the boundary action is related to

coadjoint orbits of the Virasoro group and Hill's equation.

Current observations provide precise but limited information about inflation and reheating. Theoretical considerations, however, suggest that the early universe might be filled with a large number of interacting fields with unknown interactions.  How can we quantitatively understand the dynamics of perturbations during inflation and reheating in such scenarios and when only limited

constraints are available from observations?   Based on a precise

mapping between particle production in cosmology to resistivity in disordered, quasi one-dimensional wires, I will provide a statistical framework to resolve such seemingly intractable calculations. A number of phenomenon in disordered wires find an analogue in particle production. For example, Anderson localization in quasi one-dimensional wires can be directly mapped to exponential particle production in the early universe. The talk will be focussed on the general framework and some toy examples, though in the end I will discuss possible (future) applications to calculating observables.

Spectral distortions of the CMB provide a powerful new probe of early Universe processes. Even if so far no average spectral distortion has been seen, LCDM does predict several signals that are within reach of current technology. In this talk, I will give a broad brush overview of our most recent understanding of the formation and evolution of distortions in the early Universe, highlighting guaranteed LCDM signals and what we hope to learn from them about the Universe we live in.