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The Ohio State University
College of Mathematical & Physical Sciences
Department of Astronomy Colloquium Series 2006/7
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Tuesday, February 20, 3:30 p.m.
2015 McPherson Laboratory
Understanding Cosmic Acceleration: Connecting
Theory and Observations
Hiranya Peiris
University of Chicago
Cosmic acceleration at early and late times are two of the biggest mysteries
confronting cosmologists today. The initial conditions of the Big Bang are
thought to have been set during ``inflation'', an era of almost exponential
expansion in the primordial universe. Inflation also provides a mechanism to
generate the primordial fluctuations, anisotropies imprinted into the cosmic
microwave background (CMB) radiation, which result in the rich structure of
matter today. Current cosmological data are, for the first time, precise
enough to allow detailed observational tests of inflationary models. I will
describe efforts to understand the microphysics of inflation, focusing in
particular on CMB data.
Intriguingly, several independent data sets show that the cosmological
expansion may be once again accelerating. These observations lead to the
conclusion that the universe is dominated by a negative-pressure
component, ``dark energy'', which makes up roughly three quarters of the
cosmological density density. Theoretical models for the dark energy
include Einstein's cosmological constant, a dynamical component, etc.
I will show how tools for extracting information about inflationary models
can be used to constrain the physics of dark energy.
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Modified 2007 Feb 1[bsr]