24–28 Apr 2017
Palais des Papes, Avignon
Europe/Paris timezone

How well can future CMB missions constrain inflation and reheating?

26 Apr 2017, 16:30
15m
Chambre du Trésorier (Palais des Papes, Avignon)

Chambre du Trésorier

Palais des Papes, Avignon

Speaker

Dr Vincent Vennin (University of Portsmouth (UK), Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation)

Description

Cosmological inflation is one of the leading paradigms for explaining the physical conditions that prevailed in the early Universe. It consists in a phase of very high energy accelerated expansion that solves the hot big bang model problems. When combined with quantum mechanics, it also provides a causal mechanism for generating cosmological fluctuations on large scales.

In this talk I will explain how future CMB missions will allow one to extract a few favoured models among hundreds of currently proposed scenarios. I will insist on the role played by reheating, which connects inflation to the subsequent radiation era and during which ordinary matter as we see it today is produced; and show how this epoch will also be constrained. I will finally discuss some extensions to the minimal single-field setups, where extra scalar fields are added and play a role both during inflation and reheating.

Primary author

Dr Vincent Vennin (University of Portsmouth (UK), Institute of Cosmology and Gravitation)

Presentation materials