Tufts/CfA/MIT Cosmology Seminar, at CfA:

Andrew Liddle,  University of Sussex

Title: Observational Probes of the Very Early Universe

Abstract: Cosmological inflation provides a theory for the initial
conditions for structure formation in the universe. In order to
capitalise on the rapidly improving observational situation, it is
necessary to ensure accurate predictions from inflation. In particular,
inflation produces gravitational waves as well as density perturbations
and they may provide a distinctive probe of the inflationary paradigm.
Finally, a survey is made of the present observational status of
inflation-based structure formation models, covering both microwave
background anisotropies and large scale structure observations such as
galaxy clustering and object abundances.