Multifield Inflation: Initial Conditions and Predictions

por Layne Price (University of Auckland, New Zealand)

lunes 23 sept. 2013 14:30 → 15:30 Europe/Madrid

Seminar Room Dept. Física Teórica (Universe)

The Planck satellite has recently measured the anisotropies in the cosmic microwave background to unprecedented accuracy. The data is in excellent agreement with the predictions of an early inflationary phase driven by a single scalar field. However, our incomplete knowledge of high-energy particle physics naturally leads us to consider the possibility of multiple scalar fields contributing to inflation. In this talk we will review the basic ideas of inflationary cosmology, emphasizing how multiple inflationary fields both enrich the dynamics and create new problems, such as sensitive dependence to initial conditions. We will discuss the evolution of these scalar fields in an inflating universe and sketch how our a prior' belief in their likely initial state affects the conclusions we can draw from these models.