CP3 lunch seminar : Bouncing alternatives to inflation

by Mr Patrick Peter

Wednesday 28 Nov 2007, 13:00 → 13:50 Europe/Brussels

Cycl 06

The inflationary paradigm has made many predictions that have been tested and are being tested with increasing precision. It does however have some caveats which render it presumably not the definite model for the very early universe. I shall describe a possible general class of contenders, originating in many theories (string, quantum gravity, ...), and discuss their observable consequences. Concentrating on a specific quantum cosmology (Wheeler de Witt equation in minisuperspace) situation, I will argue that such models might produce a scale invariant spectrum, in agreement with current observations. It also exhibits a consistency relation that is quite different from that obtained in the slow-roll approximation. Depending on the actual values of the spectral indices, future observations should be able to discriminate between these widely different models.