Cosmology & Gravitation

This series consists of talks in the areas of Cosmology, Gravitation and Particle Physics.

Seminar Series Events/Videos

Currently there are no upcoming talks in this series.

A Flow of Dark Matter Debris: Exploring New Possibilities for Substructure

Tuesday Aug 07, 2012
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Tidal stripping of dark matter from subhalos falling into the Milky Way produces narrow, cold tidal streams as well as more spatially extended debris flows'' in the form of shells, sheets, and plumes.Here we focus on the debris flow in the Via Lactea II simulation, and show that this incompletely phase-mixed material exhibits distinctive high velocity behavior.

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Making the Case for Conformal Gravity

Thursday Jul 26, 2012

We discuss the shortcomings of Einstein gravity at both the classical and quantum levels. We discuss the motivation for replacing Einstein gravity by conformal gravity. We show how the conformal gravity theory is able to naturally solve the quantum gravity problem, the vacuum zero-point energy problem, the vacuum zero-point pressure problem, the cosmological constant problem, and the dark matter problem.

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Dark matter densities on small scales and implications for dark matter models

Tuesday Jul 24, 2012
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We will discuss the estimated densities of dark matter in the
central regions of galaxies and discuss their inconsistency with
the predictions of cold dark matter only simulations. We will focus on
the satellites of the Milky Way to highlight this issue and then
explore dark matter with significant self-interactions as a
viable alternative. Milky Way satellites also place stringent
constraints on WIMP dark matter models in a completely different way

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The Electron's Link to the Kerr-Newman Metric

Tuesday May 29, 2012
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TBA

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New Probes of Initial State of Quantum Fluctuations During Inflation

Tuesday May 22, 2012
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How did inflation actually happen? Precision measurements of statistical properties of primordial fluctuations generated during inflation offer a direct probe of the physics of inflation. When we calculate statistical properties of primordial fluctuations generated during inflation, we usually assume that the initial state of quantum fluctuations is in a preferred vacuum state called Bunch-Davies vacuum. While there is some motivation for choosing such a state, this is an assumption, and thus needs to be tested by observations.

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Dark Energy and Neutrino Oscillations

Tuesday May 15, 2012
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In this talk I provide a model where the late time acceleration of the universe emerges from a BCS-like condensation of sterile neutrinos. This scenario can be naturally accommodated by general relativity covariantly coupled to sterile neutrinos, where the neutrinos act like an "aether" field.  We show that when active neutrinos couple to the neutrino condensate, they oscillate at a rate proportional to the dark energy density.  As a result, the oscillation of neutrinos and dark energy are tied in with the same mechanism.

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Testing Gravity with Cosmology- a new Golden Age

Tuesday May 08, 2012
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With the emergence of the dark sector in cosmology,  a variety of modified theories of gravity have come to the fore. I will discuss a framework which can be used to test gravity on large scales and the observational programmes that might lead to the tightest constraints.

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Cosmology of Axions and Moduli

Thursday May 03, 2012
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I will discuss string cosmology and the dynamics of multiple scalar fields in potentials that can become negative, and their features as (Early) Dark Energy models. The point of departure is the String Axiverse'', a scenario that motivates the existence of cosmologically light axion fields as a generic consequence of string theory. These fields can constitute part of the Dark Matter, suppressing structure formation in a manner similar to massive neutrinos. Future observations will constrain their existence to percent level accuracy.

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Tuesday May 01, 2012
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We review the notion of a quantum state of the universe and its role in fundamental cosmology. Then we discuss recent work which points towards a profound connection, at the level of the quantum state, between (asymptotic) Euclidean AdS spaces and Lorentzian de Sitter spaces. This gives a new framework in which (a mild generalization of) AdS/CFT can be applied to inflationary cosmology.

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Cosmic Magnetic Fields

Monday Apr 30, 2012
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I will describe the tight connection between cosmic baryon number and cosmic magnetic fields, and also some recent work on chiral magnetic effects in cosmology.

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RECENT PUBLIC LECTURE

Mario Livio: Brilliant Blunders

Speaker: Mario Livio