# 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.

## Is the Milky Way Ringing?

Tuesday Apr 08, 2014
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Recent observations from three different astronomical surveys have revealed evidence for asymmetries about the Galactic midplane in the kinematics of solar neighborhood stars. These asymmetries appear, in part, as compression-rarefaction modes in the bulk motions of stars perpendicular to the midplane. I will discuss the hypothesis that these motions were caused by the recent passage of a satellite galaxy or dark matter subhalo through the Galactic disk.

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## The not-so-homogeneous universe

Tuesday Apr 01, 2014
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The assumption of spatial homogeneity lies at the heart of the concordance cosmological model. But as I will discuss, truly solid empirical evidence for global (statistical) homogeneity is lacking, and tricky theoretical issues abound. I review a few recent advances in understanding the role inhomogeneity plays in cosmology, including some unexpected effects on light propagation, the death (and rebirth) of backreaction, and impending observational annoyances related to the lumpy local Universe.

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## Cosmic initial conditions and the CMB

Tuesday Mar 25, 2014
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One new frontier in cosmology is the frequency spectrum of the CMB. Future instruments may be precise enough to measure deviations from the nearly-perfect blackbody, measuring a chemical potential and thus probing energy injection at extremely high redshift. I will discuss ($\mu$ and $y$-type) CMB spectral distortions from the dissipation of entropy (isocurvature)-sourced acoustic modes. I will then discuss how a high-energy phase transition could also source such distortions.

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## Inflation After Planck

Tuesday Mar 18, 2014

The Planck satellite measurement of the cosmic microwave background has provided spectacular confirmation of the predictions of inflationary cosmology, putting inflation on a firm footing as the leading theory of the very early universe. I will discuss the implications of Planck for the simplest canonical single-field inflation models, which are favored by the data. Then I will discuss the most general question: How strong is the case that inflation is the "right" theory of the early universe?

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## SDSS-III BOSS and Beyond: fundamental physics with galaxy redshift surveys

Tuesday Mar 11, 2014
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The SDSS-III Baryon Oscillation Spectroscopic Survey, now nearly complete, is measuring the three-dimensional cosmic structure with 1.35 million new redshifts. Galaxy clustering measurements provide constraints on the cosmic expansion history through the baryon acoustic oscillation feature and the Alcock-Paczynski effect. In addition, the imprint of galaxy peculiar velocities on the observed galaxy clustering, "redshift-space distortions", provides a measurement of the growth rate of matter perturbations.

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## Cosmology Results from the Pan-STARRs Supernova Survey

Tuesday Mar 04, 2014
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The Pan-STARRs supernova survey has discovered one of the largest samples of Type Ia supernovae. Measurements of the distances to these supernovae allow us to probe some of the most fundamental questions about the properties of the universe like what is dark energy. When combining measurements from various astrophysical probes, we find hints of interesting tension with the Lambda-CDM model. I discuss the various combinations of astrophysical probes and the source of this tension.

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## Probing the Small Scale Structure of Dark Matter with Indirect Detection

Tuesday Feb 25, 2014
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Direct observation of the small scale structure of matter in the Universe provides potentially important information about a wealth of physics, from complex galaxy evolution processes to fundamental particle properties of dark matter. Detecting this fine structure in dark matter, though, is notoriously difficult. Dark matter indirect detection--through observation of radiation products of particle annihilation--may be the most direct method for observing small scale structure.

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## Evolution of cosmological black holes: exact solutions, accretion and scalar fields

Tuesday Feb 18, 2014
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Systems which contemplate the gravitational interaction between compact objects and the matter content in a cosmological environment constitute an important problem which has been studied since the early days of General Relativity. The generalized McVittie black hole is a simple exact solution to this problem, which provides us with insight on some of its known physical aspects, as well as hints to new mechanisms which arise from a formal treatment.

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## Our Lopsided Universe

Tuesday Feb 11, 2014
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After a short introduction to open inflation and the observed large-scale cosmic microwave anomalies, which have been confirmed by the Planck satellite, I'll argue that the anomalies are naturally explained in the context of a marginally-open, negatively curved universe. I'll look in particular at the dipole power asymmetry, and motivate that this asymmetry can happen if our universe has bubble nucleated in a phase transition during a period of early inflation, and, as a result, has open geometry.

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## Cosmological constraints on complex scalar-field dark matter

Tuesday Feb 04, 2014

The nature of dark matter is a fundamental problem in cosmology and particle physics. Many particle candidates have been devised over the course of the last decades, and are still at stake to be soon discovered or rejected. However, astronomical observations, in conjunction with the phenomenological efforts in astrophysical modeling, as well as in particle theories to explain them, have helped to pin down several key properties which any successful candidate has to have.

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## RECENT PUBLIC LECTURE

### Michael Cates: Bulletproof Custard: Fluids That Stop Flowing When You Push Them Too Hard

Speaker: Michael Cates