Cosmology & Gravitation
This series consists of talks in the areas of Cosmology, Gravitation and Particle Physics.
Seminar Series Events/Videos
-
Tuesday Feb 28, 2012Speaker(s):
The standard cosmological model posits that the universe is homogeneous and statistically isotropic on its largest scales. However, there is no fundamental reason why these properties have to hold, and in fact they can be broken due to interesting new physics. Moreover, there is some evidence from recent WMAP observations for 'anomalies' - including departures from statistical isotropy - on the largest observable scales.
Collection/Series:Scientific Areas:
-
Monday Feb 27, 2012Speaker(s):
Inflation, a postulated epoch of accelerated expansion in the early universe, has become a principal component of the standard model of cosmology. From a wide variety of initial conditions, inflation produces a nearly homogeneous universe populated by density fluctuations that seed large-scale structure. However, inflation is such a good homogenizer that, once unleashed, in many cases it becomes eternal, ending only within spontaneously nucleated bubbles. In this scenario, our observable universe resides inside one such bubble.
Collection/Series:Scientific Areas:
-
Tuesday Feb 21, 2012Speaker(s):Collection/Series:Scientific Areas:
-
Tuesday Feb 14, 2012Speaker(s):
First part: The research group in Yaounde (Cameroon), working on Mathematical Modelling and Applications is introduced. Second part: Global existence of solutions to the spatially homogeneous Einstein-Maxwell-Boltzmann system on a Bianchi type 1 space-time is proved.
Collection/Series:Scientific Areas:
-
Tuesday Feb 07, 2012Speaker(s):
We study the general class of gravitational field theories constructed on the basis of scale invariance (and therefore absence of any mass parameters) and invariance under transverse diffeomorphisms (TDiff), which are the 4-volume conserving coordinate transformations. We show that these theories are equivalent to a specific type of scalar-tensor theories of gravity (invariant under all diffeomorphisms) with a number of properties, making them phenomenologically interesting.
Collection/Series:Scientific Areas:
-
Tuesday Jan 31, 2012Speaker(s):
In this talk, I am going to test the concordance cosmology in three different cosmic scales. (1) On the super-horizon scale, “Copi etal. (2009)” have been arguing that the lack of large angular correlations of the CMB temperature field provides strong evidence against the standard, statistically isotropic, LCDM cosmology. I am going to argue that the “ad-hoc” discrepancy is due to the sub-optimal estimator of the low-l multipoles, and a posteriori statistics, which exaggerates the statistical significance.
Collection/Series:Scientific Areas:
-
Tuesday Jan 10, 2012Speaker(s):
TBA
Collection/Series:Scientific Areas:
-
Thursday Jan 05, 2012Speaker(s):
Cold dark matter (CDM) is a central pillar of the current cosmological paradigm. While CDM
Collection/Series:Scientific Areas:
-
Thursday Dec 15, 2011Speaker(s):Collection/Series:Scientific Areas:
-
Tuesday Dec 13, 2011Speaker(s):
I will discuss some work on the collider phenomenology and cosmology of light gravitino dark matter, and will touch on some related issues concerning infrared divergences in charged-particle decay at finite temperature.
Light gravitinos, with mass in the eV to MeV range, are well-motivated in particle physics, but their status as dark-matter candidates is muddled by early-Universe uncertainties.Collection/Series:Scientific Areas:
Pages
RECENT PUBLIC LECTURE
