10ᵗʰ Anniversary Special Edition

Session

Session VII

12 Jan 2018, 09:00

Centre for Particle Theory, Durham

24. Horizon Feedback Inflation

Mr David Rodriguez (King's College London)

12/01/2018, 09:00

We consider the effect of the Gibbons-Hawking radiation on the inflaton in the situation where it is coupled to a large number of spectator fields. We argue that this will lead to two important effects - a thermal contribution to the potential and a gradual change in parameters in the Lagrangian which results from thermodynamic and energy conservation arguments. We present a scenario of...

13. The Gravitational-Wave Background: Anisotropies and Cosmic Strings

Mr Alex Jenkins (King's College London)

12/01/2018, 09:10

With gravitational-wave interferometry firmly established as a new field of astronomy, one of the most exciting targets for future observations is the *stochastic gravitational-wave background* (SGWB). Comprised of a large number of distant, unresolved sources, this background carries much information about the early universe, and will soon become a powerful cosmological probe. While the...

14. Incoherent Mapping of the Gravitational Wave Background

Ms Arianna Renzini (Imperial College London)

12/01/2018, 09:20

The Gravitational Wave Background (GWB) is a cornucopia of information, waiting to be unraveled and explored; to this end, we've constructed a mapper which reconstructs the GWB anisotropies on the sky. In this talk, I will first introduce the GWB and its unique features. I will then present what type of data we expect to work with, and explain the mapping algorithm. Finally, I will motivate...

16. Evolution of Universes in Causal Set Cosmology

Ms Stav Zalel (Imperial College London)

12/01/2018, 09:40

The causal set approach to quantum gravity postulates that spacetime is fundamentally discrete. In this formalism spacetime is a causal set and each element in the set is a "spacetime atom" — a “here and now”, like a click of the fingers. The causal set spacetime grows through a stochastic process in which new elements are born into the set. We experience this birth process as the passage of...

15. Lattice Holographic Cosmology

Mr Matthew Mostert (University of Southampton)

12/01/2018, 10:00

A cornerstone of modern cosmology is that the Big Bang was followed by a period of rapid expansion, a time we have come to call: inflation. This mechanism has been very successful in explaining a number of cosmological observations; flatness, isotropy, and structure formation in the universe we observe today, as well as the cosmic microwave background (CMB). Inflation, whilst being widely...

8. Axion Structure Formation

Mr James Cook (King's College London)

12/01/2018, 10:20

We explore structure formation in axion models, using full General Relativity, resulting in axion stars, blackholes, and no stable objects. This problem cannot be done analytically, and we use numerical methods.