course dates credits
Inflation May 4 - May 14 2
teachers schedule term
Mehrdad Mirbabayi Mon-Thu, 11:30-13:00 3

Program:

Tentative plan:

  1. FRW and hot big bang
  2. Puzzles and proposed solutions
  3. Slow-roll inflation
  4. Reheating
  5. Perturbations
    1. Bunch-Davies vacuum
    2. Adiabatic perturbations and their conservation
    3. Tensor modes, B-modes, and ns − r plot
  6. Special topics (will not be fully covered)
    1. Non-Gaussianity
      1. Local NG, single-field consistency relation and multifield inflation
      2. Equilateral NG, EFT of inflation
    2. Warm inflation
    3. Naturalness and swampland conjectures
    4. Initial patch problem
    5. Singularity theorem and wavefunction of the universe
    6. Eternal inflation, Coleman-De Luccia tunneling
    7. Stochastic methods

Prerequisites:

Books:

Online Resources:

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