Cosmological Inflation: where we are, and where we (might be) headed

by Will Kinney (University at Buffalo, SUNY, and Visiting faculty at OKC)

Tuesday 4 Sept 2018, 13:15 → 14:15 Europe/Stockholm

FA31

Cosmological inflation proposes the existence of a period of near-exponential expansion in the very early universe, providing a dynamical explanation for the initial condition for a flat, homogeneous universe. Quantum fluctuations during inflation, stretched to long wavelengths by the rapid expansion, form a background of nearly scale-invariant perturbations, providing a powerful observational test of the model. In this colloquium, I will review the evidence for inflation in light of the most recent observations, and discuss current ideas and issues in inflationary model building, including recently proposed ``swampland'' conjectures for consistency with string-based UV completions.