Astrophysics

Non-Gaussianity is a powerful observable that may reveal important properties of the fundamental physics of inflation, with qualitative and quantitative features of higher order correlation functions distinguishing between models. Here I will discuss the structure of correlation functions in the most general single field inflation model and explain why this information is important for making use of observations from the CMB and large scale structure.

WMAP measurements of CMB temperature anisotropies reveal a power asymmetry: the average amplitude of temperature fluctuations in one hemisphere is larger than the average amplitude in the opposite hemisphere at the 99% confidence level. This power asymmetry may be generated during inflation by a large-amplitude superhorizon perturbation that causes the mean energy density to vary across the observable Universe. Such a superhorizon perturbation would also induce large-scale temperature anisotropies in the CMB; measurements of the CMB quadrupole and octupole (but not the dipole!) therefore constrain the perturbation\'s amplitude and wavelength. I will show how a superhorizon perturbation in a multi-field inflationary theory, the curvaton model, can produce the observed power asymmetry without generating unacceptable temperature fluctuations in the CMB. I will also discuss how this mechanism for generating the power asymmetry will be tested by forthcoming CMB experiments.

Instead of adding another dark component to the energy budget of the Universe in trying to explain the accelerated expansion, one can ask whether the cause is in fact the laws of gravity itself on the largest scales. In this talk, I will consider a sub-class of so-called f(R) gravity theories which closely follow the LambdaCDM expansion history, while at the same time evading tight Solar System constraints on gravity. I will present new results from cosmological N-body simulations which consistently solve for the modified gravitational force. In particular, I will discuss the effects of modified gravity on structure formation, dark matter halo properties, and cosmological observables.

The AdS/CFT correspondence has recently been extended to field theories satisfying the non-relativistic generalization of conformal symmetry, the Schroedinger symmetry. These holographic descriptions offer the potential to do calculations in the strong coupling regime of experimentally-realized condensed matter systems, such as fermions at unitarity. In this talk, we will outline the holographic formulation of such NRCFTs at zero temperature. We will then discuss the embedding of the appropriate geometry into IIB supergravity, and the finite temperature generalization that results. We will conclude with a brief discussion of the holographic description of non-relativistic conformal hydrodynamics and current research projects.

I will show the calculation of the probability distribution for the volume of the Universe after slow-roll inflation both in the eternal and the non-eternal regime. Far from the eternal regime the probability distribution for the number of e-foldings, defined as one third of the logarithm of the volume, is sharply peaked around the number of e-foldings of the classical inflaton trajectory. At the transition to the eternal regime this probability is still peaked (with the width of order one e-foldings) around the average, which however gets twice larger at the transition point. As one enters the eternal regime the probability for the volume to be finite rapidly becomes exponentially small. In addition to developing techniques to study eternal inflation, these results allow us to establish the quantum generalization of the recently proposed bound on the number of e-foldings in non-eternal regime: the probability for slow-roll inflation to produce a finite volume larger than Exp[S_dS/2], where S_dS is the de Sitter entropy at the end of the inflationary stage, is smaller than the uncertainty due to non-perturbative quantum gravity effects. The existence of such a bound provides a consistency check for the idea of de Sitter complementarity.

I will review recent progress in testing with cosmological data the inflationary hypothesis for describing the very early universe. I will present snapshots of different aspects of confronting the theory with data, including a \'bottom-up\' approach: the latest results from a systematic reconstruction of the inflationary dynamics; and a \'top- down\' approach: testing specific string theoretic constructions that attempt to implement inflation, while predicting distinctive observables not found in simple field-theory models. I will discuss the ambiguities inherent in attempting to quantify generic predictions of the inflationary \'paradigm\' (as opposed to the predictions of specific models). Finally, I will discuss (in a manner accessible to theoreticians) the astrophysical complexities underlying an observational program to look for primordial tensor modes that will discriminate between inflation and alternative theories.

Gravitomagnetism is a subtle concept. Adding Lorentz invariance to Newtonian gravity leads to magnetism, but Einsteinian gravitomagnetism differs from Maxwell\'s electromagnetism. The differences lead to confusion when Lense-Thirring precession is wrongly ascribed to gyroscopes, and when authors disagree about whether lunar laser ranging has measured gravitomagnetism. To clarify these issues, we analyze electric and magnetic effects in local Lorentz frames using the tetrad formalism.

It is argued that space-time is discretized on the basis of the gravitational interactions among the degrees of freedom of quantum fields.Configurations of fields fall into 2 classes,propagating (cisplanckian in length scale) and those that are transplanckian, sequestered in the space-time that is localized in discrete elements.Only the former determine the hubble expansion parameter and are therefore used to construct the inflaton.The model used for discretization is Sorkin\'s causet construction.From this the covariant massy Klein Gordon equation can be rationalized.The mass is encoded as an exchange matrix element between the sequestered (bound) degrees of freedom and those that propagate,presumably by tunneling thereby exlaining why m<<1.

I will illustrate the case of interacting dark Energy, that is to say cosmologies in which the dark energy scalar field interacts with other things in the universe (gravity, cold dark matter or neutrinos). After briefly presenting the status of our work for the first two classes of models, regarding both linear perturbations and Nbody simulations, I will in particular focus on the case of \'growing neutrinos\': in these models, neutrinos with a mass increasing with time might be driven to cluster at very large scales, due to a new interaction stronger than gravity and mediated by the dark energy scalar field.

The Lee-Wick model has recently been put forwards as an alternative to supersymmetry for solving the hierarchy problem of particle physics. I will show that, modulo important consistency questions, coupling the Lee-Wick model to cosmology leads to a bouncing universe cosmology with a scale-invariant spectrum of cosmological fluctuations emerging from quantum vacuum fluctuations in the contracting phase.