Universe Colloquium: An alternative scenario of inflation

by Erandy Ramirez (Universe Cluster Fellow, TU Muenchen)

Wednesday 9 Nov 2011, 16:30 → 18:00 Europe/Berlin

seminar room (basement) (Cluster building, Garching)

We propose a version of chaotic inflation, in which a fundamental scale M, well below the Planck scale, fixes the initial value of the effective potential. If this scale happens to be the scale of grand unified theories, there are just enough e-foldings of inflation. An initial epoch of fast-roll breaks scale-invariance at the largest observable scales. We find the best-fit cosmological parameters for this scenario and calculate the TT angular power spectrum for the anisotropies of the Cosmic Microwave Background and find that although this scenario naturally produces a suppression of power on the largest scales, it cannot fully account to explain the lack of CMB correlations on large angular scales observed by cosmological probes.
The talk is followed by a social gathering with wine and cheese.