Inflationary Particle Physics in Practice

by Prof. Oliver Philcox (Stanford)

Wednesday 4 Mar 2026, 11:30 → 12:30 Europe/Zurich

4/2-011 - TH common room (CERN)

Inflation is amongst the most mysterious phenomena in physics. With an energy scale potentially reaching 10^13 TeV, its physical description likely lies far beyond the realm of the standard model. This leaves many questions unanswered: what fields were present during inflation? how did they interact with each other? In this talk, I will discuss how modern cosmological datasets can be used to shed light on the early Universe by searching for the tell-tale signs of “primordial non-Gaussianity”. In particular, I will present new searches for inflationary signals in Cosmic Microwave Background and Galaxy Survey data, which allow for a detailed study of the primordial three- and four-point functions. Leveraging an array of theoretical and computational tricks, these methods can place constraints on the microphysics of inflation and directly probe particle scattering processes in the early Universe, acting as a “cosmological collider”. I will close by discussing future avenues of exploration and prospects for upcoming galaxy surveys.