Nuclear, Particle, Astroparticle and Cosmology (NUPAC) Seminars
Evidence for B-mode Polarization of the CMB and Implications for Inflation
Presented by Rouzbeh Allahverdi (UNM)
The BICEP2 experiment has been specifically designed to search for the signal of inflationary gravitational waves in the B-mode polarization of the cosmic microwave background (CMB). The results reported by the experiment are perfectly consistent with the detection of a large excess in the B-mode spectrum in exactly the range where an inflationary gravitational wave signal is expected to peak. This potentially provides us with a crucial piece of observational evidence for inflation that has been long sought.
In this talk, I describe generation of the gravity waves during inflation and their effect on the CMB polarization. Then I discuss implications of the BICEP 2 results for models of inflation, in particular how it can pin down the energy scale of inflation.
2:00 pm, Tuesday, April 8, 2014
PAIS-2540, PAIS
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