Physics

Dr. Nishant Agarwal
The Pennsylvania State University, USA

Through tremendous experimental and theoretical efforts we now have access to most of the 13.8 billion years old history of our Universe. This has led to a concordant view of how the Universe has evolved since the big bang. It is believed that immediately after the big bang, the Universe must have undergone a short period of rapid exponential expansion called inflation. In order to reliably capture the dynamics of this period, and of the pre-inflationary Universe, we need to understand the complex interplay of quantum field theory and gravity. Perturbations of quantum fields on an inflating background would have necessarily left imprints in the cosmic microwave background and large scale structure. I will discuss how we can discern these signatures in cosmological data and what they reveal about physics of the early Universe.