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The spectrum of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) is known to be extremely close to a perfect blackbody. However, even within standard cosmology several processes occurring in the early Universe lead to distortions of the CMB at a level that might become observable in the future. This could open an exciting new window to early Universe physics. In my talk I will then explain in more detail why the cooling of matter in the early Universe causes a negative mu- and y-type distortion and how the damping of primordial small-scale perturbations before recombination could allow placing interesting constraints on different inflationary models.

For the first time in human thought it is now
possible to observationally determine how much matter is in the Universe as a
whole. These observations strongly support the “Concordance Model” of Hot Big
Bang Cosmology, and reinforce earlier indications that ordinary matter (atoms,
nuclei and electrons) make up at present at most 4% of the total of the
Universal energy density. The big surprise was that the rest consists of *two*
kinds of unknown forms of matter: the so-called Dark Matter and Dark Energy.
This talk summarizes for non-specialists the various lines of evidence for
their existence, and some of the theoretical ideas which have been proposed to
account for their properties

There is strong theoretical evidence that black holes have a finite thermodynamic entropy equal to one quarter the area A of the horizon. Providing a microscopic derivation of the entropy of the horizon is a major task for a candidate theory of quantum gravity. Loop quantum gravity has been shown to provide a geometric explanation of the finiteness of the entropy and of the proportionality to the area of the horizon. The microstates are quantum geometries of the horizon. What has been missing until recently is the identification of the near-horizon quantum dynamics and a derivation of the universal form of the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy with its 1/4 prefactor. I report recent progress in this direction. In particular, I discuss the covariant spin foam dynamics and and show that the entropy of the quantum horizon reproduces the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy S=A/4 with the proper one-fourth coefficient for all values of the Immirzi parameter.

How did inflation actually happen? Precision measurements of statistical properties of primordial fluctuations generated during inflation offer a direct probe of the physics of inflation. When we calculate statistical properties of primordial fluctuations generated during inflation, we usually assume that the initial state of quantum fluctuations is in a preferred vacuum state called Bunch-Davies vacuum. While there is some motivation for choosing such a state, this is an assumption, and thus needs to be tested by observations. In this talk I will present new probes of initial state of quantum fluctuations during inflation: the 3-point function of the cosmic microwave background anisotropy, the 2-point function of galaxies, and a spectral distortion of the thermal spectrum of the cosmic microwave background.   

In this talk I provide a model where the late time acceleration of the universe emerges from a BCS-like condensation of sterile neutrinos. This scenario can be naturally accommodated by general relativity covariantly coupled to sterile neutrinos, where the neutrinos act like an "aether" field.  We show that when active neutrinos couple to the neutrino condensate, they oscillate at a rate proportional to the dark energy density.  As a result, the oscillation of neutrinos and dark energy are tied in with the same mechanism.  I also show that neutrinos could oscillate even if dark energy is not a neutrino condensate.  I end with a discussion of stability of this model and predictions of CPT violating oscillations of such models.

I show how the local Lorentz and/or diffeomorphism invariances may be broken by a varying c, softly or harshly, depending on taste. Regardless of the fundamental implications of such dramas, these  symmetry breakings may be of great practical use in cosmology. They may solve the horizon and flatness problems. A near scale-invariant spectrum of fluctuation may arise, even without inflation. Distinct imprints may be left, teaching us an important lesson: our foundations may be flimsier than we like to think.

New techniques for obtaining the complete set of analytic solutions of the usual cosmological equations continue to shed new light on various aspects of cosmology. This approach, which was developed with a locally Weyl invariant formulation of gravity in 3+1 dimensions, was inspired by the 2T-physics formulation of all physics in 4+2 dimensions. I will first give a review of the general aspects of the analytic cosmological solutions, including recent work with Shi-Hung Chen, Paul Steinhardt and Neil Turok, on geodesic completeness through the singularity and the nature of the Big Crunch/Big Bang transition. Then I will include the full Standard Model, and discuss how the instability of the Higgs potential and the conditions for the electroweak phase transition develop slowly during cosmological evolution of the universe, thus understanding that the electroweak phase transition is not "spontaneous" and the Standard Model is not decoupled from gravity or cosmology. This scenario, which is currently being developed further, is the natural cosmological consequence of coupling the Standard Model to Gravity by imposing Weyl symmetry, a feature that is required if 2T-physics in 4+2 dimensions is considered as the starting point. There are no dimensionful parameters, not even the Newton constant. Emergent dimensionful scales are dynamical during the evolution of the universe.

I will discuss string cosmology and the dynamics of multiple scalar fields in potentials that can become negative, and their features as (Early) Dark Energy models. The point of departure is the ``String Axiverse'', a scenario that motivates the existence of cosmologically light axion fields as a generic consequence of string theory. These fields can constitute part of the Dark Matter, suppressing structure formation in a manner similar to massive neutrinos. Future observations will constrain their existence to percent level accuracy. I couple such an axion to its corresponding modulus and give a detailed presentation of the rich cosmology of such a model, ranging from the setting of initial conditions on the fields during inflation, to the asymptotic future. A dynamical systems analysis reveals the existence of many fixed point attractors, repellers and saddle points, which I analyse in detail, and provide a geometric interpretation of. These fixed points can be used to bound the couplings in the model. A systematic scan of certain regions of parameter space reveals that the future evolution of the universe in this model can be rich, containing multiple epochs of accelerated expansion.

(Given time) I will also discuss the relevance of isocurvature perturbations in these models, and the motivation to study negative (terminal) vauca in the context of eternal inflation and the string landscape, as recently discussed by Susskind.

(based primarily on Marsh, Tarrant, Copeland and Ferreira (to appear) but also arXiv:1102.4851  arXiv:1110.0502)