Tufts/CfA/MIT Cosmology Seminar, at CfA:

Tuesday, October 4, 2005
2:30 pm
Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics
60 Garden Street, Cambridge
Phillips Auditorium

"Testing Inflation: non-Gaussianity and the Epoch of Reionization"


Daniel Babich
Harvard-Smithsonian, CfA

Abstract:

Constraining the epoch of inflation is a major goal of cosmology. Inflation generically makes three major predictions: (1) the existence of a background of gravity waves, (2) a nearly scale-invariant spectrum of primordial curvature perturbations, (3) that all fluctuations are Gaussian. My talk will address the last two of these predictions. I will first discuss how the epoch of reionization may complicate our efforts to measure the tilt of the power spectrum. Then I will focus on what we can learn from measurements of non-Gaussianity in the CMB.

Return to Joint Cosmology Seminar home page.